New York — Singer-songwriter Noah Kahn’s “Stick Season” is about New England — something the Vermont native says he could write about for the rest of his life — but it’s largely about the spaces in between. is also.
When resentment remains but forgiveness seems possible. When a broken friendship starts to heal. When homesickness collides with the desire to leave. Or, in the case of the album’s title track, when autumn hasn’t turned into winter yet.
Writing the folk-pop album, he told The Associated Press, felt “like breathing”.
Kahn revisits those themes through a new lens on the recently released “Stick Season (We’ll All Be Here Forever)”, a deluxe edition of the album featuring six new tracks and the fan-favorite “The An extended version of “View Between Villages” is included. , The story is also added to the eight months between the release of the original album and now.
Kahn said of summing up the version of the house he wrote about with reality, “I’m speaking about the high and the low.” “And the truth is, when you really go back it’s always in the middle.”
The song, “Stick Season,” went viral last year, earning millions of streams largely fueled by social media. This wasn’t her first major release – at age 26, Kahn has already put out three studio albums and two EPs. But it was one with momentum: Fans heard the song long before it was released, with Kahn hearing it on a pandemic-era Instagram livestream and at shows that followed. When the single came out last July, Kahn called it “her favorite song” in a tweet.
Viral TikTok followed. One of them was a cover of two sisters sitting at the piano, playing notes.
“We’re Canadian. We’re very Canadian. At that point, we had never left the country,” says Moira McMullin, 24, half of indie folk-pop duo Moira & Claire, told the AP. “But somehow we got into the spirit of it … There’s just something about his writing.”
His TikTok video, posted a day after the song’s release, has now garnered nearly 3 million views. Kahan commented on TikTok: “Better than the original.” Moira McMullin’s first trip outside of Canada would be to see Kahn perform in Vermont.
“Everyone in the crowd is from Vermont, and I’m like (singing) ‘I love Vermont,’ and I’m not even from there,” she said. “It was very loud, and … just wild.”
Seeing fans connect to the song’s lyrics and themes has been “the best thing”, with “Stick Season” in particular marking its wholehearted embrace of the folk genre and childhood influences such as The Avett Brothers and Paul Simon. .
Kahan said of past projects, “When I would write more pop-y songs in the studio, I would go home and write a song that was more folk-y for me because I felt like I was reaching that inner child. ” , “To finally be able to explore that in this record and really lean into those inspirations and really release those feelings.”
Humorous moments throughout the album reflect Kahn’s personality. But the themes he analyzes are heavy – there are references to heartbreak, isolation and homesickness as well as substance abuse, death, depression and divorce. Kahn’s statements are not complete, but that’s the point.
Making the album about home, he said, felt like home. But watching it explode in the months that followed was emotionally and creatively challenging.
“I wanted to show people who I was and continue to do in the context of ‘Stick Season,’ but also explain that over the past year I’ve been on this journey, touring all the time and trying to be creative.” To try and make me feel like I was a cheater,” Kahan, who has long been open about her mental health, said as she described the inspiration behind the deluxe album.
It was meant to introduce some acceptance and grace, to counter some of the resentment that influenced the original release, he said: “In many ways I wrote this record as a letter to myself that it’s okay to feel these things. It is okay to move forward on this journey.
At a sold-out concert at New York’s Radio City Music Hall two days before the deluxe album’s release, Kahn encouraged “even the happiest person in the room” to stay in therapy. He sang his lyrics, with open references to his depression, medication and therapy, and invited the audience to shout his words back.
Dressed in dark green, brown, plaid, and blue denim overalls, the crowd obliged, rendering the Radio City atmosphere you’d find at summer camp — and not just because the show dropped on a day when the air outside There was a smell of smoke from the bonfire.
“Songwriting has always been a way for me to express my feelings. Sometimes I’m not good at processing them in a very logical way. “Sometimes it just takes me sitting down to write a song that I was feeling like,” Kahn told the AP.
That’s why it seemed like a natural step for her to launch The BusyHead Project with the aim of raising $1 million for organizations specializing in mental health resources and awareness. Launched last month, the project named for his 2019 album has already raised more than $340,000, with Kahn donating a portion of his tour ticket sales.
Kahn’s tour opener Joey Oladokun acknowledged his mental health struggles during his set. Her latest album, “Proof of Life,” features a collaboration with Kahan on the dark-but-also-kind-of-fun “We’re All Gonna Die.”
“For me, music has always been about building bridges,” Oladokun told the AP.
Like Kahan, acknowledging difficult things before performing them in his songs or on stage is “very important to my values”. “That’s why I leave my house and go on tour first of all.”
But honesty can be brutal. It’s not always easy to sing – or sing along – to these songs.
“A lot of these songs talk about shame and substance abuse and parental imperfections and family trauma. And those are difficult things,” Kahan said. “They are difficult for me to write, and It’s hard (for fans) to be at a show and sing it. But it is a beautiful, beautiful thing to see.
One song that has been unexpectedly adopted is “Orange Juice.” Kahn has stated that the track, which alludes to sobriety, is about two friends who reunite after the breakdown of their relationship in the wake of shared trauma.
Kahan said, “It’s a song I wasn’t going to play because it felt so personal and so vulnerable.” It is a matter of pride for him to see people adopting it on social media and on the show.
“We’re writing about heavy things and we’re dealing with heavy things, and we’re two sensitive people,” Oladokun said. But she also tries to keep some humor at the forefront of her projects. The lyric video for “We’re All Gonna Die” features animated versions of the couple racing coffins, parodying Mario Kart (which they play together before soundcheck).
“We like to have fun too, you know?” He said.
