Have you ever questioned if leaving your backwater, no-streetlight town was the right decision? Because if you haven’t, singer-songwriter Noah Kahan’s fourth studio album “The Great Divide: The Last Of The Bugs” will make sure you understand exactly the kind of conflict that comes with outgrowing the place that raised you.
And if you have questioned it? Get ready to be in tears.
In his typical New England folk fashion, Kahan manages to encapsulate the feelings of immense familial guilt packed in every nook and cranny of the region, starting from the opening track “End of August.” The quiet opening piano chords layered against the sounds of nature set that somber tone before Kahan reminisces about his dying town.
But this album isn’t exploring his feelings about the dying town. Instead, it explores the complicated feelings of those within the town he left behind, and how he believes they perceive him. It’s an exercise in examining one’s own relationship with their hometown through those left behind. Something that for a college student who finally found fulfillment outside of the town that made her, hits like a truck stuck on Storrow Drive.
Some of those songs depict the perceived hate that Kahan believes his hometown of Strafford, Vermont, holds for him getting out. The most obvious example of this is “Downfall.” Kahan’s lyrics are critical in the way that only weathered New England townies can be — laced with care hidden under a cold exterior. “So call me when it goes to shit / I’ll be keeping the house the way it was,” from the chorus is such a simple line with so much care and emotion behind it. The anxiety of believing that the community you left behind cares just enough to welcome you back when you inevitably fail is an emotion he captures so perfectly.
After telling everyone “If you wanna go far / then you gotta go far,” in his breakout album “Stick Season (We’ll All Be Here Forever),” he suggests the other side of that same coin, in “Dashboard.” The whole song is a stark reminder that leaving home only means something if you’re going for a reason — not just running away from the life you once had. “You always went looking for an easy way out / Leave the pain you can’t solve with the folks you let down,” is haunting. Did you leave home because it was good for you, or because you couldn’t face what once was?
Maybe Kahan’s anxiety matches mine a bit too closely, but deep down, I wonder if that’s how my family and friends from my hometown feel about me when the closest thing they get to updates is reposted Instagram stories. “Asshole” would be a fitting moniker.
“Porch Light” demonstrates that not all the feelings Kahan is concerned about are marred with hatred. Some are quieter, with a sick sense of longing for someone that may never come back. The lyrics are wistful, with an upbeat melody exuding that false hope that maybe Kahan will come back, sick of the fame and change that took him away from this town in the first place.
The contrast the lyrics have, of regretfully wishing for Kahan’s return while acknowledging it is only because they are alone, is a common theme throughout the album. When you leave something behind and become successful, that thing — whether a person, place, or community — remains. And whether you forget about it or not, it remembers you.
In construction, the storytelling is incredible. Each song brings its own merit to the idea of grief for someone who has left. However, I want to highlight my attention to what I believe is the best song on the album, and one that has not received nearly enough love for how genius it is.
The song, “Paid Time Off,” holistically seems to be one of the happiest on the album. The “vibes” of the song are much happier, as unofficial as that may seem, but it goes beyond just a quick tempo. Kahan sings the chorus, “And your love is like an open flame / I’m a running car, you’re a closed garage,” in such a cheery manner that the devastating connotation behind it can almost be lost. It’s a song about two very different people finding happiness together in a dying town, even when they don’t view the world in the same manner.
Is my defense of this song partially motivated by how I see my brother and me as the two people within the song, down to the opening lines, “I called you / But I’d run out of words?” Maybe. But it doesn’t change the fact that even in his most deceptively happy tunes, Kahan is still carefully twisting the knife in the heart of his listeners.
And like in the past, Kahan ends his album with his saddest song, as well as drawing back to the stories he’s shared through his music in the past. “Dan” is a depiction of friendship in the truest form — forged in a shared sadness that transcends the spoken word. Kahan sets a scene of him and the titular Dan on a rare camping trip. They aren’t exactly rekindling their friendship — with friendships like that, the usual routine is muscle memory — but it’s Kahan accepting his past.
He doesn’t have to like where he came from. He doesn’t have to understand it anymore. But for that brief night with Dan, “Waiting for the sun to rise,” Kahan accepted that all that has happened to him is more than the anxiety that defines him. It is just simply a part of what has made him. No more, and no less.
