Album Review: Noah Kahan’s fourth studio album ruins any chance of joy — in a good way

Audrey Coleman
Tue, 28 Apr 2026 00:00:53 +0000
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Noah Kahan performs onstage as SiriusXM & Pandora present Noah Kahan Live from The Warfield on Thursday, Feb. 5, 2026, in San Francisco. Credit: Mike Coppola/Getty Images for SiriusXM via TNS

Hit folk-rock singer Noah Kahan released his fourth studio album, “The Great Divide,” Friday, after a four-year break from releasing music. While Kahan has been releasing music since 2019, his jump into true celebrity status wasn’t until 2022 with the release of “Stick Season.”

His recognizable strong vocals are paired with bass, guitar and drums, the typical instrumental lineup for borderline country artists. In Kahan’s newest album, there’s something extremely cathartic in every song.

Even three days after the release, each listen through reveals something that went unnoticed the time before.

With that, there’s no sugarcoating the gut-punch that this album is. There’s no sad, slow ballad that is shoved into the middle of the tracklist to make it seem well-rounded. The entire record tells a story — one that can be interpreted differently from listener to listener.

The tone of the 21-track album is set with the opening song “End of August.” With slow piano, backed by the quiet calm of crickets, the song evokes an immediate reaction that makes you stop what you’re doing and sit in silence.

“End of August” will be a lethal addition to kids moving away to college, young adults moving out of their college homes after commencement and really anyone in-between.

The album picks up speed with “Doors,” but still causes irreparable emotional damage, and it’s only the second track. It was one of the tracks Kahan leaked on TikTok, which made it a highly anticipated addition, and it didn’t disappoint.

“American Cars” toes the line of sounding like a carbon copy of songs from earlier albums. It’s not a standout track, but it fits into the album seamlessly.

Even three songs in, listeners can tell every track was written, recorded and placed in the order with intention. Everything has a similar sound, but not to the point of sounding repetitive. It’s clear “The Great Divide” is meant to be the better, more comprehensive follow-up to “Stick Season.”

“Paid Time Off” feels like a Lumineers song’s distant cousin, leaning into the banjo feature. For visual learners, it’s the equivalent of driving in the middle of nowhere with the sun shining overhead.

Sandwiched toward the middle of the record, the album’s title track, “The Great Divide,” has quickly become a staple in any breakdown soundtrack — bonus point if you’re driving back from a particularly emotional function.

“I hope you settlе down, I hope you marry rich / I hope you’re scarеd of only ordinary s–t / Like murderers and ghosts and cancer on your skin / And not your soul and what He might do with it,” Kahan sings in the chorus.

“Haircut” is a great segue, still feeding into that experience but a little less aggressively. As someone who has never moved on from anything, maybe ever, the entire album is close to an hour-and-a-half of summarizing every feeling that comes with dwelling on the past.

“Willing and Able” comes out of left field to make everyone’s heart sink to the floor. The bridge hits harder than the main chorus, leaving listeners to interpret the lyrics in relation to any complicated relationship of their choosing.

“Oh, I wish you could know me / And I wish I could know you much more sometimes / Wish I could do nothin’ with you / Sit in the yard while the day dies / Leave it all on the table,” Kahan sings over a fairly stripped-down acoustic guitar.

“Dashboard” is best experienced while driving down a winding road in the middle of the woods, preferably on the way out of one’s hometown. As one of the album’s highly anticipated tracks, it lives up to the pre-release hype.

“23” is another solid track, but between two amazing picks — “Dashboard” and “Porch Light” — it’s at a disadvantage, lineup-wise.

“Porch Light” is the second single that was released from the album and has spent six weeks in Billboard’s Top 100. It was a strong single, but it falls short of a personal top five after the rest of the album came out.

Immediately following is “Deny Deny Deny,” another strong song, but not one that jumps out lyrically or sonically this late in the album. Had it been placed closer to the beginning, it might have been more of a favorite, but at No. 14, it’s a disservice.

“Headed North” feels out of place, but in a good way. It’s entirely acoustic, clearly recorded outside around a campfire, with crickets and summer bugs flitting around in the background. Though it’s more of an interlude track, it serves as a peaceful break from the heavy-hitters before it.

Instead of jumping right back into another more upbeat track, “We Go Way Back” enters the picture. It almost feels like a boygenius song, with the same guitar chords quietly in the background and a melancholic comfort throughout it all.

The album then picks up a bit, with “Spoiled” lightening the mood. While it jumped out more during the first full listen, it slipped lower on the overall track ranking after listening through more than once.

Kahan saved the two most devastating songs for last, “All of Them Horses” and “Dan,” which is only fitting as the record starts out in the same depressing fashion. Both lean towards the quiet, slower side of his discography.

“Know I wanna beat it, wanna beat it bad / Oh, everyone looks happy in a photograph / I’ve crossed the county line, I cannot go back / I’m always on my own,” Kahan sings during the chorus of “All of Them Horses.”

And then there’s “Dan,” which should not be listened to unless you would like to induce a mental breakdown, thinking about how some of your best friends live across the country, and how when you do see them, everything feels right.

A day after the initial album release, Kahan surprise-dropped four deluxe tracks — “Lighthouse,” “Staying Still,” “A Few of Your Own” and “Orbiter.” What makes the deluxe release so surprising, other than the quick turnaround, is the way that they’re placed throughout the album, not just added on to the end. “Staying Still” was the true standout of the four, though every song has its perfect home and addition to the record at large.

Overall, the album is everything that listeners could have hoped for and more. It pairs extremely well with “Stick Season” and will likely cement Kahan’s place in the folk-rock music scene.

The whole hour-and-a-half is like sitting around a fire in a wooden porch chair, cold drink in hand, slowly watching the sunset on the last night in the place you’ve called home for the last four years.

Kahan absolutely perfected the sound and story of the record, accompanied by a heaviness that settles over one’s soul and lyrics that feel like more than a simple coincidence. Quite sickening, actually.

Rating: 5/5