Crossing state lines and outrunning shadows - Noah Kahan’s “The Great Divide”

By Sophia Oppedisano Editor-in-Chief The first time I heard Noah Kahan’s single, “The Great Divide,” I was packed into Fenway Park for his first career show at his hometown ballpark with 30,000 other screaming New Englanders. Halfway through the show, Kahan stepped up to the mic and played the unreleased track. He warbled on about a long-gone boyhood friendship, assuring him, “You know I think about you all the time and my deep misunderstanding of your life.” As a 20-something addicted to the honesty and charm of his third album, “Stick Season,” and EP, “Cape Elizabeth,” I clicked with the remorse, the yearning, and the unabashed apology for youthful misunderstanding. And then, he did not include the track on “Live From Fenway Park,” forcing me to wait with bated breath, and maybe even some aggressive impatience, for this song and this album. The studio version of “The Great Divide” rang true to the live version I heard almost a year prior, and the album itself is a patchwork of soul-searching, epiphanies, and grating self-deprication. Kahan is an outlier in the folk-pop multiverse of stars such as Zach Bryan, Sam Fender, and Mumford & Sons, borrowing some of their influence but stripping it down to the studs of raw storytelling and lyricism. The musicality is there on tracks like the stomp-and-holler “Doors,” “Deny Deny Deny,” the riffing “American Cars,” and the fiddle-swept “Haircut,” where Kahan sings from the perspective of the guy who made it out of his hometown and found success, but can’t curb his self-doubt. “At least I got soul still / even if I’m in a bad place,” Kahan sings on “Haircut,” the perfect antithesis to “Dashboard” - a track told from the perspective of someone the successful rockstar left behind - “Tryna run away / change your zipcode / turns out that you’re still an asshole.” Over the 96 minutes of the deluxe edition, “The Great Divide: The Last of the Bugs,” the songs do, at times, begin to blur with some sonic redundancy, but in a testament to the times, listeners are being asked to put down their phones, pay attention, and sink into the lyrical layers of the album. The standout track from the four additions on “Last of the Bugs” is undoubtedly “Staying Still.” Kahan described “Staying Still” as a “silly” track about not wanting someone’s plane to take off - “And I never ask for much / but I hope that Logan crumbles and gets hit by a tornado,” he sings. In truth, though, silly as it may be, Kahan speaks to the heart of long-distance relationships and the specific longing and all-consuming loneliness that comes with them - “Oh, I can't keep on starting over / sleeping in a bed half empty daydreaming … Honey, tell me / are you good at staying still?” Kahan gets to the heart of the matter of distance - metaphorical and physical - quite effectively on this record with tracks like “All Them Horses,” “Willing and Able,” and “Downfall.” The record as a whole stays true to Kahan’s signature style, and while he explores the quintessential themes of fame and regret like any artist who has seen overnight success, he does so with an introspection and a frankness that his fans have learned to not just love, but need. The New Englander, 20-something, eldest daughter, long-distance girlfriend in me sees the loneliness, growth, and soul-searching in you, Noah. Rating: A- I don’t have to keep trying to start this one over.