Noah Kahan’s “The Great Divide” was released on April 24, exciting fans and enticing a new following of the artist. Although Noah Kahan started out as most artists do—singing in a small venue in Nashville—he has since gained attraction through his breakout song “Stick Season,” released in 2022. Now “The Great Divide” is his fourth studio album and it did not disappoint. 

For starters, this album had two singles released before the official release date, “The Great Divide” and “Porch Light.” “The Great Divide” is an introduction to the album, with a track that sets up the overall sound of the album through a mixture of drums and electric guitar. It is also a very classic Noah Kahan song that is a cross between pop and indie and this reeled in listeners and kept them excited for the full album release. “Porch Light” had acoustic guitar and big harmonies that weren’t debuted in “The Great Divide.” All this being said, these two were arguably the best picks to come out as singles.

To look at the album from a bird’s eye view, fans automatically felt seen when Kahan said “the bugs” throughout the album, since that’s what his fans named themselves. “The Great Divide” also discusses multiple difficult topics, like Kahan dealing with fame and how he thinks that affected his hometown, Strafford. He goes into more thorough detail on each song’s meaning in his commentary, available on Amazon Music.

Listening to the album start to finish, immediately it is known that it will tell a story. The “End of August” begins with soft piano that is melodramatic but then builds leading up to the chorus. From there, the song exhibits distraught emotions through Kahan’s vocals. Further, the trumpets and drums make it sounds like a train which portrays leaving summer and taking the train home to normal life. Moving through the set, “Paid Time Off” has different sounds of banjo and acoustic guitar that add variety to the album. And later “Haircut” is another song with deeper meaning, as a haircut represents starting over after a breakup, similar to “Clean” by Taylor Swift. “Haircut” also has violin included which adds variety but a key change in the last chorus that keeps the song cohesive with the rest of the album, since this is a very Noah Kahan sound.

And not only is every song a banger or ballad, there are aspects that specifically stand out such as “Headed North,” where voiceovers and the sound of the outdoors (cicadas, rustling of leaves, etc) are included. This song specifically gives Kahan and his production team the creativity to formulate a newer sound for the album and artist in general.

An extra feature to “The Great Divide” is the second, longer released album “The Great Divide: The Last Of The Bugs” which has an additional four songs. These four songs were given as “the last of the bugs,” one of which being “Staying Still;” a song that was teased in the months leading up to the album and was highly anticipated to be one of the best, if not the top song of the album. Now that every single song of this album is out, “the bugs” can fully enjoy what Noah Kahan has created.