Album Review
June 7, 2026
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Credits: Patrick McCormack / Mercury Records
Noah Kahan just dropped his fourth studio album, The Great Divide. Produced by Gabe Simon along with Aaron Dessner and released in April 2026 by Mercury Records, it was written in the afterglow of his 2022 breakout album Stick Season with its viral title track and the hit single ‘Northern Attitude’. The album continues the style Kahan is known for, sticking to the familiar, comforting imagery he famously stood up for on X, saying: “I love writing about New England and family and friendships and critters and trees and weather and there ain’t a damn thing gonna change”.
As the album explores the impact of sudden fame on his family, his friendships and the very fabric of Vermont that defines him and his home, Kahan presents an honest view of the challenges that this rapid rise to stardom has presented to him. It’s definitely one of the most relatable albums of this year, looking at the emotional range and storytelling!
When Kahan first attached a snippet of ‘End of August’ to the debut post of his ‘secret’ TikTok account, @thelastofthebugs, he resurrected a universe of lyrics his fans are all too familiar with. On the final track of his 2022 record, ‘The View Between Villages,’ he left listeners with a parting thought about “the last of the bugs.” The new opener takes up where he left off in devastating fashion.
I just love how this board perfectly captures what ‘End of August’ sounds like. Where Kahan is known for his guitar strumming, the song opens with a delicate, twinkling piano, signaling the dying days of summer. At its core, the track explores that painful longing for a moment that is quickly going to vanish.
From that point on, the tracklist spans a broad array of songs that touch on similar internal conflicts. It perfectly captures an artist learning how to coexist with his own inner complexities and plays out in two distinct directions: an outward struggle against his changing environment and an inward reckoning with his own identity.
One of my favorite tracks on the whole album is ‘All Them Horses’ (and I’m clearly not alone, it has turned into a fan-favorite very quickly!). At its core, it circles around the question of whether you can leave a place and still belong to it. It’s an incredible look at the ultimate contradiction: managing to achieve massive success without feeling like you’re winning and wandering the world without ever finding real freedom. I’ve seen many college students relate to this interpretation of the song on TikTok and can only agree in saying: Noah Kahan must have been a teenage girl in his prior life to encapsulate all of our feelings (no matter if it’s move-in day or graduation season).
“You know I wanna beat it, wanna beat it bad
Oh, everyone looks happy in a photograph
I crossed the county line, I cannot go back
I’m always on my own”
‘You’re Gonna Go Far’ from Stick Season is a staple on every long-distance daughter’s playlist. ‘Dashboard’ explores that same theme of leaving, but in a much more complex way. It introduces a contradiction that leaves us feeling instantly called out for “going far,” making us wonder how Noah goes from encouraging us to chase our dreams in one song, to viewing it as leaving things behind in the next. While that wasn’t his intention, he’s sparked a viral emotional trend by perfectly mirroring our fears of how others might perceive us, forcing us into an inner dialogue with our own self-critical thoughts.
“Look at you go, crossin’ state lines with your shadow
Trying to run away
Change your zipcode
Turns out that you’re just an asshole”
Listening to the album, you naturally find yourself wondering what exactly this ‘great divide’ means to Noah.
When unpacking the record’s title, Kahan points directly to the need to bridge the gaps that eventually developed in his personal life alongside his growing fame. Speaking with Apple Music, he stated that the gap he wanted to cross most was the one growing between himself, his friends and his family.
The entire record provides a space for those deeply human conversations that can be quite difficult to face in person. As Kahan put it, “I describe this album like I’m in the shower and I’m [..] yelling at the showerhead and pretending it’s whoever I wanna talk to and [..] saying everything and taking responsibility or throwing blame.” It really is an exercise in dropping all defenses and speaking with honesty in the hope of receiving the same level of vulnerability from the other person. Ultimately, it is about creating the type of genuine connection that can bridge this ‘divide’.
Nowhere is this better seen than in the contrast between the title track and the album’s closer. While ‘The Great Divide’ represents the notion of distance between people, Kahan revealed in an interview with Rolling Stone that his favorite track, ‘Dan’, is actually the song that acts as an antidote to the concept explored before. The song was named after a friend and explores the theme of finally releasing the thoughts that have been weighing on an individual all along and the beauty in allowing people to open up to one another.
Kahan’s focus on mental health extends far past his discography. In the 2026 Netflix documentary Noah Kahan: Out of Body, he addresses his struggles with the emotional weight of success as well as his battles with body dysmorphia. Kahan has also been open about living with OCD, allowing for further representation of those navigating similar challenges.
In 2023 he also created The Busyhead Project with the intention of helping individuals with mental health challenges by channeling his platform into funding accessible community care.
In the process of writing this piece, I had each and every song on repeat for days to figure out which ones were absolutely crucial to include. (Honestly, I could see myself writing several pages about this album! I Kahan’t get over how good it is!) Even though I see why some claim the album is too long - the extended version, The Great Divide: The Last of the Bugs, contains 21 songs and clocks in at 1 hour and 36 minutes - I have to disagree. Does the imagery stay consistent across all tracks? Yes. But does that automatically make the songs redundant in their themes? Not at all. Some albums need more space for the individual tracks to breathe and fully explore their emotional depth. I’m incredibly glad all of these songs made the cut.
The Great Divide is a 10/10 for me, a standout achievement in lyricism that is deeply relatable to all of us. If you’re ready to process all the feelings that have built up since Noah told us to ‘go far’ on his last album, this is the record for you.
(Just make sure to have your journal ready for the many meaningful takeaways!)
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