After the world-conquering success of 2022’s ‘Stick Season’, Noah Kahan has found himself in a strange position. Having built a career upon small-town specificity, anxious confessionals, and folk songs that felt like they had been carved into the wood of your grandparents’ porch, the 29-year-old has become far bigger than the world he was writing about on that album.
Arriving shortly after his surprisingly candid Netflix documentary Out of Body, his fourth album ‘The Great Divide’ finds the Vermont songwriter reckoning with that dissonance in real time. For anyone expecting a dramatic reinvention, this is not it.
Instead, Kahan pushes deeper into emotional folk-pop terrain, approaching it with a slightly different perspective alongside a production team comprising long-time collaborator Gabe Simon and Aaron Dessner.
Opener End of August sets the tone beautifully, its late-summer imagery and soft ache capturing the strange grief of time moving on whether we are ready or not. Doors sharpens that interrogation, pairing warm guitars with the push-and-pull of wanting to be understood whilst making yourself impossible to reach.
Composed of 17 tracks and clocking in at more than 70 minutes, there are moments where ‘The Great Divide’s length works against it, sometimes circling those similar ideas of home, family, sobriety, and disconnection without finding a fresh angle. Yet when Kahan lands a line, his uncanny ability to make private devastation feel communal lands with full force.
The rockier drive of American Cars brings one of the record’s most cathartic moments, while Paid Time Off sits in a more reflective space, capturing the numbness of trying to escape a life you can’t quite bring yourself to leave. Elsewhere, Porch Light and Dan tap into how fame can change your relationship to home and those within it, and it’s here that ‘The Great Divide’ feels most powerful, Kahan reckoning with the complicated aftermath of his growth.
Expansive, occasionally overlong, but deeply human, it’s the sound of a musician standing on one side of enormous success and trying to call back across the expanse. It doesn’t always cross the gap, but when it does, it hits hard.
Noah Kahan Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Thu November 05 2026 - GLASGOW OVO Hydro
Fri November 06 2026 - GLASGOW OVO Hydro
Mon November 09 2026 - MANCHESTER AO Arena
Tue November 10 2026 - MANCHESTER AO Arena
Fri November 13 2026 - LONDON O2 Arena
Sat November 14 2026 - LONDON O2 Arena
Tue November 17 2026 - LONDON O2 Arena
Thu November 19 2026 - DUBLIN 3Arena
Sat November 21 2026 - DUBLIN 3Arena
Sun November 22 2026 - DUBLIN 3Arena
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