Noah Kahan’s new single ‘The Great Divide’ adopts a retrospective narrative, outlining someone thinking of a person from their past. The imagery is beautiful – he contrasts the ‘ordinary’ things he hopes they are afraid of (‘ghosts’ and ‘cancer’) with the symbolic ‘not your soul’, alluding to a complex undercurrent.
Much of Noah Kahan’s music is about the vulnerable connections between people – after stripping back layers of emotional baggage and complicated pasts, Kahan emphasises understanding as at the core of humanity.
‘The Great Divide’ is no anomaly. If anything, it brings these themes together into what feels like a culmination of his rich portfolio. I saw traces of his 2020 album Cape Elizabeth in its lyrics, with its poignant reconsideration of an old friend’s hardships (‘my deep misunderstanding of your life’) reminding me of ‘Glue Myself Shut’ and ‘Anyway’, where Kahan similarly represents speakers who gently observe a (presumably) partner’s flaws and struggles. In both ‘The Great Divide’ and his earlier work, the speakers don’t try to change someone, they just express their honest recognition of another’s emotional depth – tapping into the empathy, or sometimes lack thereof, that lies at the heart of relationships.
It was equally haunted by ‘Stick Season’ in its pronounced guitar strumming and Kahan’s raw voice – enhanced by his impressive vocal range, his vocals give that passionate, belting tone that we crave in his music. The subtle nods to ‘Call Your Mom’ and the phone number from ‘She Calls Me Back’ in the song’s music video highlights this interplay between his albums.
Notice how I framed his addressees as an ‘old friend’ and ‘(presumably) a partner’. We cannot be certain who he is speaking to, and in that, I think, lies the song’s greatest power. As listeners, we can project our own experiences into the song, filling the space that his tentative ambiguity has left for us. In this way, the song has a healing quality.
I am excited to see more on April 24th, when his new album The Great Divide is released.
