Noah Kahan

Songs from the woods, words from the shower

Noah Kahan’s songs can feel like the conversations we rehearse alone and never quite have. He describes his fourth album, The Great Divide, as half-yelling at the showerhead at someone he wishes he could talk to—taking responsibility, throwing blame, and letting the unsaid spill out. In “End of August”, he reaches for the hush of a Vermont summer town, where the woods seem to carry their own voices. It’s an intimate, slightly haunted way into big feelings: the landscape becomes part of the conversation.

That mix of plain-spoken candour and small-town atmosphere gives Kahan’s songs room to feel both close-up and expansive. His Great Divide Tour brings him to Sydney’s Afterpay Arena, where those private thoughts meet the scale of a big-room show. A good entry point if you like songwriting that can turn a lonely walk—or an imaginary argument with bathroom fittings—into something worth singing along to.