{"id":5210,"date":"2026-05-19T21:49:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T21:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2026\/05\/19\/noah-kahan-crosses-the-great-divide\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T21:49:21","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T21:49:21","slug":"noah-kahan-crosses-the-great-divide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2026\/05\/19\/noah-kahan-crosses-the-great-divide\/","title":{"rendered":"Noah Kahan crosses \u2018The Great Divide\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>OK, I\u2019ll say it. I miss millennial music. There is a gaping, \u201cstomp-clap-hey\u201d shaped void left by the road-tripping, skinny-jean-wearing, indie rock of yesteryear. The new records from the old guard \u2014 think The Lumineers\u2019 uninspired <a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/arts\/music\/praise-for-the-lumineers-new-album-is-not-automatic\/\"><em>Automatic<\/em><\/a> \u2014 just don\u2019t sound the same as they did in 2016.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Lately, it\u2019s looking like the closest we can get to a millennial revival is Noah Kahan.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Like his predecessors, Kahan\u2019s appeal is in his everydayness. He\u2019s wearing a <a href=\"https:\/\/people.com\/thmb\/VQ4ii4WI179ApxN7XjZkml73sIo=\/1500x0\/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(749x0:751x2)\/noah-kahan-101322-3-e7473c4d6e4e43dcb84a345b9d6bd9e1.jpg\">flannel<\/a>. You can grab a beer with him. He\u2019ll probably offer you a <a href=\"https:\/\/stopswithme.com\/how-zyn-rewards-uses-concerts-and-prizes-to-addict-youth\/#:~:text=In%20April%202025%2C%20Noah%20Kahan,program%20and%20have%203%2C000%20points.\">zyn<\/a>. He feels strongly about his rural hometown, and he\u2019s going to tell you about it. His lyrics are earnest and folkish, but he\u2019s never offensive.<\/p>\n<p>On his third studio album, <em>Stick Season<\/em>, Kahan embodied<strong> <\/strong>the radio-friendly side of the emerging <a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/arts\/b-side\/its-all-just-neil-young\/\">alt-country scene<\/a>. His writing was smart and overly personal, but he rarely strayed from pop progressions and structured most of his tracks like worship music; using suspended chords to build predictable emotional peaks and repeating choruses maybe one too many times. But they were catchy, and fill the stomp-clap niche that we\u2019re too embarrassedto miss.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-1    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>And now he\u2019s back.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Following two <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/album\/1pb3je8gXTs5dpRRTKhHRC\" type=\"link\" id=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/album\/1pb3je8gXTs5dpRRTKhHRC\">re-releases<\/a> of <em>Stick Season<\/em>, Kahan dropped <em>The Great Divide<\/em> and its accompanying deluxe version, subtitled <em>The Last Of The Bugs<\/em>. He works from the same palette of ordinary themes \u2014 hometowns, relationships, growing up \u2014 yet he\u2019s audibly older. While bloated at times (each of the record\u2019s 14 tracks stretch close to the five-minute mark), Kahan has finally begun to develop a sound that is truly his own.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This growth is definitely aided by signature melodramatic production from The National\u2019s Aaron Dessner, who was absent on <em>Stick Season.<\/em> You\u2019ve heard Dessner\u2019s work on the best track of Taylor Swift\u2019s <em>Folklore<\/em> (\u201cexile,\u201d duh), the new Laufey album and <a href=\"https:\/\/rateyourmusic.com\/artist\/aaron-dessner\/credits\/\">more<\/a>. Like an indie <a href=\"https:\/\/artists.spotify.com\/songwriter\/0jdtXxGhcy0ycjSBMT5Qij\" type=\"link\" id=\"https:\/\/artists.spotify.com\/songwriter\/0jdtXxGhcy0ycjSBMT5Qij\">Jack Antonoff<\/a>, everything Dessner touches becomes full-bodied and warm, but at times his style is<strong> <\/strong>too polished for Kahan\u2019s messy, personal writing. It is only when gritty textures overcome perfectly calculated crescendos that Kahan\u2019s sound fully matures.<\/p>\n<p>This isn\u2019t to say that Dessner\u2019s production is always sanitizing Kahan. The record\u2019s opening track, \u201cEnd of August,\u201d\u00a0is a carefully crafted ballad only made robust by Dessner\u2019s expert understanding of creating a soundscape. In the beginning of the track, we\u2019re thrown into a forest in rural Vermont, where Dessner manages to make both synths and cicadas sound equally from nature. Under the forest hum, violins and trumpets are barely audible, seemingly tuning up to create the most well-earned build of Kahan\u2019s discography thus far. This is probably the only track on the album whose five-minute runtime is fully utilized and welcomed. It ends with a classic Kahan line: He murmurs \u201c05072,\u201d the ZIP code for his hometown in Strafford, Vermont. This track makes it clear that this is a new era wherein Kahan is not afraid to experiment.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, a track like \u201cDoors\u201d is largely unremarkable until the last minute. It starts with an acoustic, muted chug and kick-drum, Kahan gently sings a line about his childhood, and by the second verse guitars are fully strummed and he\u2019s wailing. Of course, the classic Kahan formula sounds <em>good<\/em>, until a heavy twang electric-guitar riff breaks through the perfectly constructed melodrama, and suddenly it sounds <em>great<\/em>. We hear the faint buzz of the amp, there\u2019s gain and a violin, it feels like Kahan is backed by musicians with a vision instead of a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mumfordandsons.com\/\">Mumford &amp; Sons<\/a> cover band.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-2    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>In the following tracks, we see that Kahan\u2019s range has expanded since <em>Stick Season<\/em>\u2014 pop ballads like the syncopated \u201cStaying Still\u201d or rock drives like \u201cDeny Deny Deny\u201d sound equally mature through the atmosphere Dessner creates. Even tracks like \u201cThe Great Divide,\u201d \u201cWilling and Able\u201d or \u201c23,\u201d whose repetition begins to feel boring after minute three, are kept afloat by Dessner\u2019s intricate production.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Yet at other times, Dessner holds back. The subtle banjo and violins on \u201cAmerican Cars\u201d and \u201cHaircut\u201d are particularly smart but not present enough. They lend even more earnestness to Kahan\u2019s vocals, which at times are too clean. He\u2019s singing songs about alcoholism while sounding like he should be harmonizing in a boy band.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The best vocal-instrumental balance is reached on \u201cPaid Time Off,\u201d the most charming song on the record. With a wonderful twist midway through, Kahan diverts from the usual set-up to a typical acoustic ballad and breaks into a banjo-centric ditty about the simplicity of a hometown lifestyle. It\u2019s in these moments, when Kahan breaks the mold with a more Appalachian, string-forward sound, that he\u2019s at his most exciting.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Overall, <em>The Great Divide <\/em>is a step in the right direction for Kahan. While the album jockeys between predictability and novelty, Kahan leverages the base of his warm-indie sound and leans further into an Americana influence that makes him feel older and wiser. He\u2019s still a regular guy, his lyrics still have the millennial era feel of sitting down at a campfire, but now he\u2019s backed by an industry titan who\u2019s expanding his range. <\/p>\n<p><em>Senior Arts Editor Siena Beres can be reached at <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/arts\/music\/noah-kahan-crosses-the-great-divide\/mailto:sberes@umich.edu\"><em>sberes@umich.edu<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-3    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p><h3 class=\"jp-relatedposts-headline\"><em>Related articles<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>OK, I\u2019ll say it. I miss millennial music. There is a gaping, \u201cstomp-clap-hey\u201d shaped void left by the road-tripping, skinny-jean-wearing, indie rock of yesteryear. The new records from the old guard \u2014 think The Lumineers\u2019 uninspired Automatic \u2014 just don\u2019t sound the same as they did in 2016.\u00a0 Lately, it\u2019s looking like the closest we [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5211,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[4732,4733,809,4731,1717],"class_list":{"0":"post-5210","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-crosses","9":"tag-divide","10":"tag-great","11":"tag-kahan","12":"tag-noah"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5210"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5212,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5210\/revisions\/5212"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}