Following the success of Stick Season, Noah Kahan returns with The Great Divide, and from the very beginning, it felt like one of those releases people were both excited by and slightly intimidated by. Seventeen tracks is a lot. Fans were already joking about needing emotional stamina before even pressing play; and honestly, that concern isn’t unfounded. It’s long, sometimes very long. But there’s also something admirable about that; it doesn’t feel like he trimmed anything down to chase hits or algorithms. A few hours later, as if seventeen songs weren’t enough, he dropped the extended version, The Great Divide: The Last Of The Bugs, adding Lighthouse, Staying Still, A Few Of Your Own, and Orbiter; because apparently Noah heard “this album is long” and said “what if it were longer?”
Production-wise, the album is handled by Kahan himself alongside Gabe Simon and Aaron Dessner; the latter especially makes sense if you’ve followed his work with Taylor Swift or The National. You can hear that textured, earthy, slightly melancholic touch all over the record. Parts of it were recorded at Long Pond Studio, which is a bit of a flex considering albums like Folklore and Evermore were birthed there, alongside sessions for Ed Sheeran, Gracie Abrams, and Mumford & Sons. You can feel that environment; the album sounds warm, wooded, almost like sunlight filtering through leaves, even when the lyrics are quietly wrecking you.
The opening run is honestly stunning. End of August sets the tone with delicate piano and long instrumental stretches that feel almost angelic; “Anything you need I will provide, a ride home or an alibi” lands like a promise of what’s to come. It’s distant yet intimate, like watching a memory fade in real time. Then Doors pulls things inward; less musically striking, perhaps, but lyrically it hits with raw self-awareness: “And in that dark, and in that frost a heart was born, malcontented and unwarm.” It isn't trying to make Noah look good, and that’s exactly why it works. American Cars is where everything clicks early on; easily one of the most beautiful tracks here, it captures the idea of people who hold you together without even trying. There’s something quietly devastating about the way it discusses being stuck — moving, but never really leaving.
Downfall feels like the first slight dip; still good, still honest, but missing that one moment that really sticks. It leans into those uglier thoughts, that quiet resentment when someone leaves and you almost hate that you want them to fail just so they come back. Then Lighthouse slides in with that extended-version glow, adding more atmosphere than impact, before Paid Time Off shifts things sonically. It’s more country-leaning with more movement, even if lyrically it doesn’t quite hit the same highs. Still, lines like “I’m a running car you’re a closed garage” do a lot with very little.
Staying Still is one of those tracks that makes you understand why fans latched onto the album so quickly; it’s simple and relatable in a painfully specific way: “I always hated the sunlight at 3pm where it’s too soon to quit thinking, too late to change anything.” It captures that ‘stuck’ feeling better than most songs here. The title track, The Great Divide, is easily one of the emotional cores of the album; personal, reflective, and just slightly bitter. “I heard nothing but the bass in every ballad that you’d play” feels like such a small detail, but it says everything about miscommunication and distance.
Haircut is where the record really starts digging into identity: fame, change, and the fear of losing oneself in the process. “But at least I got soul still, even if I’m in a bad place” sums it up perfectly. It’s simple, almost casual, but it sticks. Willing and Able and Dashboard explore relationships from two very different angles; one is quietly heartbreaking, realising someone isn’t right for you, while the other is more intense, almost bitter, wrestling with the idea that you can never fully escape who you were. The theory that Dashboard might be about Kahan himself adds another layer, and honestly, it tracks.
23 feels more like a moment than a full statement; a showcase for his voice, which really is one of the album’s strongest tools — deep, then suddenly lifting, always controlled. Porch Light grows a lot within the album’s context; what might feel like just another good song at first becomes an emotional anchor, especially with that chorus. Then Deny Deny Deny brings in a slightly rockier edge, which is a much-needed shift at that point; it explores the same themes of toxic relationships, but with more bite.
The middle-to-late stretch is where the album quietly shifts into something deeper rather than dragging; what might seem long on paper starts to feel immersive in practice. Headed North brings a bit of humour into the mix, but it’s that bittersweet kind: “And it’s gone to shit without you. It was shit before, but at least I had you.” It balances self-awareness with emotional dependency in a way that feels very on-brand for Noah. From there, We Go Way Back and Spoiled soften everything; not in a forgettable way, but in a way that pulls you further inward. They feel like late-night conversations — less about big statements and more about sitting with someone who actually understands you.
All Them Horses becomes an emotional turning point; it leans into that uneasy space between success and emptiness, where achieving something doesn’t necessarily mean feeling fulfilled. There’s a quiet identity crisis running through it, like realising you’ve outgrown a place but haven’t quite found where you belong. A Few Of Your Own continues that introspection before Orbiter expands it into something almost cosmic. “This ain’t Watertown, I’m on alien ground / I’m an astronaut, you’re the moon, I stare at you, I sing to you, I circle you” isn’t just pretty imagery; it’s about distance, admiration, and emotional orbiting. It captures the feeling of revolving around someone without ever fully reaching them. It’s one of the most conceptually rich moments on the album, and it quietly reframes everything that came before it.
And then there’s Dan. Honestly, it doesn’t just close the album; it resolves it. “Flip a rock, see the bugs sleeping sound, hey that’s us, you and I will be found” takes something small and almost invisible and turns it into a metaphor for connection. After all the searching, the doubt, and the emotional back-and-forth, it lands on something disarmingly simple. “Where do we go when we die? I wouldn’t mind right here, I wouldn’t mind at all” feels less like a question and more like acceptance; not in a dramatic, existential way, but in the quiet realisation that maybe being understood, even just by one person, is enough.
What really carries this album is Kahan himself. His writing doesn’t try to be perfect or overly poetic for the sake of it; it’s messy, sometimes repetitive, and occasionally on-the-nose, but it’s real. He lets himself sound selfish, bitter, and confused, and that honesty is what makes the whole thing work. There’s a constant tension between maturity and resentment; some songs feel like looking back with understanding, others feel like he’s still right in the middle of the fire. That contrast might feel inconsistent, but it also gives the album its identity.
It’s not flawless. The sound, while warm and cohesive, doesn’t always evolve enough across such a long runtime. But at the same time, that grounded, almost repetitive comfort is part of the experience. This isn’t an album that tries to overwhelm you with huge moments; it sits with you, slowly, until you realise how much it’s actually been saying. By the time it ends, The Great Divide: The Last Of The Bugs feels less like a perfectly structured album and more like a long conversation you didn’t expect to have. It’s uneven, a bit bloated, and occasionally exhausting, but it is also deeply human. And honestly, that’s kind of the point.