Noah Kahan | Graphic by Bethany Althauser | The Wright State Guardian
After a series of releases and collaborations through the 2020s, artist Noah Kahan has recently released the February 2024 version of his music titled “Stick Season (Forever).” Here is a deep dive of the 30-track album’s songs.
Background
The song “Stick Season” was released as a single in July 2022 and quickly gained internet popularity. Noah Kahan then released a full-length project, which he has said was written during the COVID-19 lockdown, leaning into the indie-folk alternative music style. In October 2022, Kahan released “Stick Season,” an album featuring 14 tracks. He then released more singles leading up to the release of “Stick Season (We’ll All Be Here Forever)” in June 2023, which features 21 tracks.
Kahan was seeing success on this album unlike anything he had previously seen in his career. Soon, he released collaborations with other artists, singing songs that were previously solos on “Stick Season.” In total, there are now eight collaborations, so Kahan released the third version in February 2024. This version, “Stick Season (Forever),” has 30 tracks.
Themes of the album
“Stick Season (Forever)” has many references to childhood and hometown nostalgia. It explores the feelings attached to certain places or people and how those change over time. While Kahan includes a lot of specific references to his life in New England and the Midwest (including Ohio!) because these are the areas that he grew up around, he has a way of making his lyrics feel relatable.
To do a proper deep dive, here are my thoughts on each track, in the order they are on the album.
1. “Northern Attitude”
This is the perfect opening track to the album because it sets up that Kahan has a lot of negative attitudes and habits that he wishes he did not have and is trying to fight, but they are ultimately a result of how he was raised and his childhood.
2. “Stick Season”
It makes sense to name the album after the song that inspired it, especially when that song is such a classic. While it now feels overplayed to me, I never skip it when it comes on.
The phrase “stick season” refers to the gross time of year when there are no leaves on trees and no snow on the ground. This song mostly centers around being lonely in the town that you grew up in, despite being an upbeat, fun-to-sing song.
3. “All My Love”
One of the most upbeat songs on the album, this track is a one-sided conversation with an old love, updating them on Kahan’s life and how nothing has changed for him, and he still loves them despite not knowing anything about their life.
4. “She Calls Me Back”
This upbeat song follows an admittedly obsessive man longing for an ended relationship with a girl who will not return his phone calls anymore.
5. “Come Over”
Kahan describes his childhood house, using a lot of metaphors and personification to paint it as sad. The song is addressed to a peer from Kahan’s childhood who is uninterested in Kahan, but whom Kahan wants to be friends with. It is a sad track, but one of my personal favorites.
6. “New Perspective”
This song discusses learning the lessons from the past and trying to remain open to future ones. This song is a good example of Noah Kahan’s tendency to use very specific items as symbols to represent something else.
“Paper bags drift wherever the wind blows, and mine’s full of receipts,” is one of the many artistic lyrics throughout the album.
7. “Everywhere, Everything”
A beautiful and upbeat love song that emphasizes living in the present. It is so sweet.
One of the lyrics is, “Everywhere, everything, I wanna love you ’til we’re food for the worms to eat, ’til our fingers decompose, keep my hands in yours.”
8. “Orange Juice”
A beautiful song to a now-sober loved one, recounting all of the painful moments in their journey together and the struggle that the prospective person has experienced along it.
9. “Strawberry Wine”
This song about lost love feels like a beautifully tragic lullaby. It is equal parts sweet and bitter, like its namesake.
“No thing defines a man like love that makes him soft and sentimental like a stranger in the park,” is a standout lyric of the entire album.
10. “Growing Sideways”
This song focuses on mental health, detailing a lot of struggles that are often not talked about so candidly in music. Kahan’s lyrics are blunt and let you know exactly how this person was feeling and thinking.
11. “Halloween”
A haunting song about feeling haunted by the absence of a living person, even after trying to move on from them.
12. “Homesick”
This song captures the mixed emotions that Kahan feels towards his hometown. How he wants to escape it but also never wants to leave and has no reason to. He sees so much of who he is there but wants more.
13. “Still”
A song about loss and heartbreak and the inability to move on, this song is deeply sad and relatable to anyone who has experienced grief.
14. “The View Between Villages”
A coming-of-age story and reflection on everything that has happened along the way, this is a sad but hopeful song, which made it a great closer to the original album Kahan released.
15. “Your Needs, My Needs”
Listening to this song is always like going on a journey because it changes sonically throughout in a really interesting way. It is a look at the reasons why a relationship did not work out.
16. “Dial Drunk”
This song describes a person who gets arrested and uses his phone call on a person who he has not yet moved on from, and that person hangs up, leaving him singing, “I dial drunk, I’ll die a drunk, I’d die for you.”
17. “Paul Revere”
This song discusses small-town life and how things change over time. It is very nostalgic and illustrates and tells the story of the town beautifully, with a standout lyric being, “This place had a heartbeat.”
18. “No Complaints”
This is a song about struggling with mental health and struggling to discuss it with other people.
“I finally got sewed up. I set a time and I showed up,” is one lyric.
19. “Call Your Mom”
Another hopefully tragic tune about begging a loved one not to take their own life. This song has become very popular online, and for good reason.
20. “You’re Gonna Go Far”
It was upon my friend having me listen to this song that I decided I was a Noah Kahan fan. This song serves as a love letter to a loved one who is moving away for college.
This song can be either heartbreaking or uplifting, depending on how you interpret it. I choose to let this song be a warm hug, reminding the loved one that they can come back anytime because “We’ll all be here forever.” This must be one of Kahan’s favorites, too.
21. “The View Between Villages – Extended”
This makes a good closer for “Stick Season (We’ll All Be Here Forever),” but is ultimately just “The View Between Villages” with some vocal clips of a sweet old lady at the end.
22. “Forever”
A love song about growing closer to someone and slowly learning everything about them, flaws and all.
The lyric “I might loosen my grip, but I won’t ever let her go” helps represent the hopeful theme of the song.
23. “Dial Drunk” (Noah Kahan & Post Malone)
I like this version equally to how much I like the original version, but I still find myself skipping this version more often than the version without Post Malone.
24. “Call Your Mom” (Noah Kahan & Lizzy McAlpine)
For me, Lizzy McAlpine’s vocals do not add anything to this song. They do not necessarily make it worse, but I still prefer the original.
25. “She Calls Me Back” (Noah Kahan & Kacey Musgraves)
Hearing the opposite perspective of this relationship added a beautiful layer to it. The two singers’ voices sound lovely together, and I liked hearing the chorus in reverse.
26. “Northern Attitude” (Noah Kahan & Hozier)
Hozier has such a beautiful voice, but it does not fit the instrumental track as well as Kahan’s voice does. I like the parts where they sing together, but when I listen to Hozier’s verse, I find myself missing the original song.
27. “Everywhere, Everything” (Noah Kahan & Gracie Abrams)
I wish I could go back in time and live in the moment when I first heard Gracie Abrams singing this song. She has such a whimsical presence in this song and harmonizes with Kahan beautifully.
28. “Homesick” (Noah Kahan & Sam Fender)
The new verse does not mesh with the rest of the lyrics the same way the original did, but this song still sounds nice.
29. “You’re Gonna Go Far” (Noah Kahan & Brandi Carlile)
Brandi Carlile’s vocals in this song are gorgeous as always. She breathes such life into the part of the song that previously fell flat in comparison to the rest, and her voice adds to the warm feeling of home and family that this song gives.
30. “Paul Revere” (Noah Kahan & Gregory Alan Isakov)
I loved the original version of this song, but the collaboration between these two really levels up this sound sonically, for me.
Overall thoughts
This album has had a huge impact on a lot of people and explores a lot of important and relatable themes. It is so important that mental health is talked about more in society, and Noah Kahan weaves it into his music beautifully. He discusses mental health in many of the tracks on this album as well as in his previous work.
“Stick Season” was a big break for Kahan, although many people knew him before. There are so many directions that he can go in now. He might even release a fourth edition of “Stick Season,” maybe this time with a collaborative version of every song.
