The Great Divide <\/p>\n
\ue9d9 \ue9d9 \ue9d7 \ue9d7 \ue9d7 <\/p>\n
Artist: Noah Kahan<\/p>\n
Label: Mercury<\/p>\n
The summer of 2026 is turning into the season of brooding dudes who sound as if they\u2019ve just woken from a snooze. Dermot Kennedy<\/a> has already attempted to pummel us into submission with a concept album about the trees at the end of his garden<\/a>. <\/p>\n Now comes his transatlantic spiritual soul mate Noah Kahan<\/a>, an outdoors type with a voice like a dozen rocks being chucked down a well and an obsession with songs about tree lines, county lines and the invisible lines that have divided him, a once-ordinary person, from the community he grew up with.<\/p>\n Kahan\u2019s persona is of a regular guy from a small town with modest ambitions for his career and his life. Behind the scenes, however, the architecture that has made possible his rise from singer-songwriter obscurity has been thoroughly modern. He blew up on TikTok, where his wooden single Stick Season became a late-era lockdown sensation.<\/p>\n The outdoorsy guy who just wants to be left alone \u2013 more or less the theme of The Great Divide, his fourth studio album \u2013 has chosen to roll out the next phase of his career with Out of Body, a Netflix<\/a> documentary produced by your friendly neighbourhood music promoter, Live Nation<\/a>. This is like getting a recycling lesson from the people who want to tarmac your local park.<\/p>\n Nothing Kahan does is actively offensive, which is perhaps the problem. While plainly operating in the slipstream of Mumford & Sons<\/a> (what if banjos were posh and annoying?) and Hozier<\/a> (what if Jesus went to Trinity College Dublin and was really into open-mic nights?), he lacks the element of ludicrousness that sets those artists apart. He is also audibly indebted to Ed Sheeran<\/a>, although he lacks Sheeran\u2019s facility for a killer pop song. (Scorn Sheeran all you like, but the man can craft a banger.)<\/p>\n [\u00a0Live Nation and Ticketmaster had monopoly over major venues, US jury findsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n Since becoming famous, Kahan has often said that it\u2019s all quite overwhelming and he doesn\u2019t much like celebrity. That hasn\u2019t stopped him from thoroughly embedding himself in the corporate music business, of course: tickets for his three shows at 3Arena<\/a> in Dublin in November top out at more than \u20ac200, which is going to buy him a lot of lumberjack shirts when he gets back to his cabin in Strafford, Vermont.<\/p>\n That message of aw-shucks humility is threaded through the album, although it never quite lands as authentic: the vibe of The Great Divide is more that of a fake antique churned out on a production line. The record \u2013 and the success of Kahan and his peers \u2013 is also a warning that life never turns out as you expect. <\/p>\n Back in the early 2000s it seemed that the most influential artists of the age would be cool rockers such as The Strokes and Jack White. But in fact the true historymakers have been the avant-garde folkies Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver, whose genuinely thoughtful, reflective music has become the blueprint for a generation of mass-produced acolytes, none more factory-fresh than Kahan.<\/p>\n The big idea behind The Great Divide is that Kahan is an Everyman among Everymen who, after all his success, just wants to get back to the hometown where it all began. Amid chirruping crickets, he\u2019s out in the great outdoors, reflecting on the impermanence of it all. \u201cOh, everything you see out here will die,\u201d he sings on the album\u2019s autumnal opener, The End of August, which, to be fair, is not a line you\u2019ll hear from Ed Sheeran.<\/p>\n A heavy haze of torpor lies over an LP that is crisply produced and rigorous about its hooks and choruses yet ultimately feels drained and lacking energy. Perhaps Kahan has stretched himself too far: a 17-track concept album about the travails of being both a bit outdoorsy and hugely famous is a lot.<\/p>\n