After the viral success of his last album, Noah Kahan’s life would never be the same. Upon the release of Stick Season: We’ll All Be Here Forever, the deluxe version of his 2022 record Stick Season, Kahan found himself propelled into the spotlight after tracks like “Dial Drunk,” “Call Your Mom,” and “You’re Gonna Go Far” gained traction on TikTok and Spotify. His biggest hit, the title track of the album, has almost 1.8 billion streams as of April 2026. Kahan felt that following up such an album would be an impossible task, and was incredibly nervous when he sat down to write his new record. Part of what made Stick Season so real was its intrinsic hometown ties, with references to Strafford, Vermont filling every nook and cranny; the town’s influence blanketing the album like snow. However, a lot had changed in Kahan’s life since the release of his last album, with much of his time being taken up by world tours and promotional work in New York and Nashville. Kahan found something of a split between his life before and after his last record, which he unpacked and reconciled with on his newest record, The Great Divide.
From the first piano motif in the intro of “End of August,” the tone of the album is already set, something pensive and nostalgic that feels like returning home. Kahan describes a group of childhood friends taking a familiar drive at the conclusion of summer before a new stage of their lives begins, hearkening back to “The View Between Villages” with its reference to “the bugs… just starting to die.” The narrator comes to the sobering realization that this moment (and the world around them) is ultimately ephemeral, but still beautiful, crescendoing into a beautiful instrumental that truly captures “the feelin’ of being alive for the first time in a long time.” Kahan plays with his town’s supposed perception on himself and his newfound fame in songs like “American Cars,” “Dashboard,” “Downfall,” “Headed North,” and my personal favorite, “Haircut.” He reckons with the way that his newfound fame has completely changed not just his own life, but the lives of everyone in his rural Vermont hometown. Kahan feels as if he doesn’t belong in this town anymore, but also can’t imagine his life outside of it, which he laments in the late track “All Them Horses.”
Kahan also looks inward at family dynamics in songs like “Willing and Able,” “Deny Deny Deny,” and “23.” The latter is a particularly heartbreaking track delving into an estranged sibling relationship destroyed by addiction, where the narrator wishes to never see his sibling again so they can remain the idealized version from his childhood. Kahan writes “tattooed your initials into my right arm / so I’d see your name when I lift up a drink,” highlighting how his sibling’s addiction constantly looms over him and even potentially influences him in his own vices. Tracks like “Doors,” “We Go Way Back,” and bonus track “A Few of Your Own” celebrate his relationship with his longtime partner and now wife, Brenna. However, Kahan has said that his favorite theme on the album is that of friendship, which is best exemplified in the closing track named after his best friend, “Dan.” Kahan signs about how through the most pivotal and darkest moments in his life, it was his friends who pulled him through them, circling back to the car ride mentioned in “End of August.” “Dan” is truly the thesis of the entire album; no matter how hard times are, we rely on our loved ones to see us through. Life is full of countless changes and challenges, and we simply cannot go through them alone. Even when our world turns completely upside down, when everything we’ve ever known is suddenly shifting, the people we love will always support us through the best and worst of it.