Album review: Noah Kahan - The Great Divide: The Last of The Bugs

Noah Kahan has never exactly been known for keeping things to himself. Still, 21 songs and 96 minutes is a lot to ask of anyone. The Great Divide: The Last of the Bugs, the expanded version of his fourth album, should feel bloated. Sometimes it does. But cutting it down presents another problem: the sprawl is partly what allows Kahan to move beyond himself.

Where Stick Season was tangled up in home, leaving it and everything that happens when you return, The Great Divide is more interested in the distance between people. Parents, siblings, friends, partners, and people who once occupied one of those roles but don't anymore move through the record. Kahan is still writing about anxiety, depression, and his own capacity for self-destruction, but increasingly through the relationships they affect. Over 96 minutes, the divide stops being one thing.

“End of August” sets that up beautifully. It's haunting and incredibly intimate, slowly building around Kahan rather than immediately reaching for the kind of chorus that could fill an arena. The production grows around him without losing that closeness, which is something The Great Divide does remarkably well. This is a much bigger record than Kahan's earlier work, but bigger doesn't always mean louder.

That balance runs through some of its strongest moments. “Doors” puts abandonment and inadequacy against music that doesn't carry the same heaviness as its lyrics. There's a constant fear underneath it: that someone will leave, that you're not good enough, that eventually the people you love will decide loving you is more trouble than it's worth. Kahan translates those thoughts without letting the song collapse underneath them.

Thankfully, The Great Divide also knows when to get out of its own head. “American Cars” is genuinely fun. “Staying Still” turns nervous energy into something physical, its percussion giving the song a momentum that makes sitting still nearly impossible. “Dashboard” is funny. These moments matter on a record this long. Ninety-six minutes of Kahan staring directly into the abyss would be less an album than an endurance test.

But he's at his best when he lets the uglier thoughts remain ugly. “Downfall” doesn't clean heartbreak up into something noble. Kahan can want someone back while simultaneously wanting them to hurt. He can imagine them finding someone kind and still hope that kindness gets used against them. There's something painfully recognizable in that contradiction. Sometimes someone hurts you, and you hope they're happy. Sometimes a tiny, horrible part of you hopes their next relationship sucks too.

The record becomes harder to keep at a distance when Kahan turns toward family. “Willing and Able” hit me particularly hard. There are relationships we're taught to think of as permanent simply because they're family, but wanting that closeness doesn't mean you'll get it. Sometimes you can try for years before accepting that sharing blood isn't enough to keep people in each other's lives.

“Dan” approaches belonging from the other direction. I've lost people I once thought would always be there, but I've also reached the point where I know who my people are. I know who would answer the phone. The Great Divide keeps returning to that distinction: the people we're connected to by circumstance and the people who actively choose to remain.

That makes “23” particularly difficult. Its depiction of loving someone through addiction hits close enough to home that I don't have much critical distance from it. I know what that relationship can do to the people around it.

Kahan's specificity is what allows these songs to become personal without requiring his circumstances to mirror your own. He writes from his life, but doesn't seal the songs inside it. There's enough room for recognition, and across 21 tracks, plenty of opportunities to stumble into something you weren't expecting to find.

For me, that happens again with “Orbiter,” only without the same hurt. That song belongs to my children now. Whatever Kahan originally wrote it about doesn't really matter to the way I hear it anymore. Some songs attach themselves to people before you've even decided they should.

None of that means The Last of the Bugs needs every one of its 96 minutes. It doesn't. “Lighthouse” is fine, and on a 21-song album, fine is where you start reaching for the scissors. Other songs take longer to distinguish themselves. “Paid Time Off” needed several listens before I stopped letting it disappear into the record. There is almost certainly a tighter version of The Great Divide buried in here. I'm just not sure it would be a better one.

The excess gives Kahan room to keep changing what the divide actually means. Romantic love sits beside resentment, family beside estrangement, addiction beside friendship and parenthood. The record isn't simply interested in whether people stay or leave. It's interested in what they leave behind, what we carry into the next relationship, and which connections survive despite everything working against them.

That's what makes the length easier to forgive. Not every one of these songs is essential, but the accumulation is. By the end, the people surrounding Kahan have become almost as important as Kahan himself. And somewhere along the way, his people start making you think about yours.