Kahan summons stick season and nostalgia
Noah Kahan, “Stick Season” (Mercury Records/ Republic Records) It’s the season of the sticks. It has been since July 8, when Noah Kahan released the first single and title track from his third album, “Stick Season.”
A cascade of controlled reflections on a changing relationship, the track sees Kahan liken his emotions to a pre-winter Vermont - when leaves have fallen but snow hasn’t settled, leaving tree branches just sticks. The lyrics are precise - “I’ll dream each night of some version of you / That I might not have but I did not lose” - and emotive - “Once called me forever now you still can’t call me back” - marrying honesty and relatability with ease.
Clips Kahan posted of the song on TikTok earned millions of views and covers he shared earned hundreds of thousands more, a testament to the accessibility of his words as listeners adapted them to their own stories or continued his. And while we’re not really there yet - in stick season, that is - the track foreshadows more than a time of year. It made clear that Kahan, an experienced songwriter and performer with multiple tours behind him, would take his lyricism to the next level on the album.
There’s a newfound maturity in his tone, a musical confidence that shines as he explores his vulnerabilities and doubts while exhibiting his growth.
Kahan’s relationship with his New England upbringing inspires the content and sound. That’s immediately clear on the album opener “Northern Attitude,” an unapologetic ode to the region featuring a plucked riff that builds to a rousing, layered composition. The same idea emerges even stronger on the thumping “Homesick,” where he belts with pride: “I’m mean because I grew up in New England,” and on the softer, almost conversational “Still.”
“She Calls Me Back” stands out, maybe because you can almost hear a smile emerge as he sings, a break from an otherwise mostly melancholy album. The chorus is almost too good to spoil.
Kahan’s vulnerability is centered on “Orange Juice,” about a friend’s sobriety, and “Growing Sideways,” about his own mental health journey. The stories these songs tell make it clear that Kahan - always a friend of folk - is fully at home in the genre.
On the pleading ballad “Come Over,” he whispers: “Someday I’m gonna be / somebody people want.”
There’s irony there because these feel like songs both longtime listeners and newer fans will want to belt back to Kahan - not because they’re produced for stadiums or arenas, but because they’re full of nostalgic melodies that will resonate far beyond New England.
The 1975, “Being Funny in a Foreign Language” (Dirty Hit/Interscope)
There is plenty to like about The 1975’s new album until there’s something to really admire.
“Part of the Band” is the kind of song - is it postpop, prog-pop, post-prog pop? - that refuses to follow a tempo pattern as it caroms from cellos to lounge ballad to sax solo, with dense, funny lyrics. It will make radio DJs sweat.
“Am I ironically woke? The butt of my joke? Or am I just some post-coke, average, skinny bloke calling his ego imagination?” frontman and lyricist Matty Healy sings. Have any lyrics captured the 2022 mood better for a liberal-leaning white cis male pop star?
“Part of the Band” is the outlier on the 11-track “Being Funny in a Foreign Language” - an album designed to blow up radio with romantic love songs, from ballads to dance hall ditties, all the while referencing Aperol and QAnon.
The blissful pop of “Happiness” will make those scared DJs now very happy, with utterly sincere lyrics from a lovesick man: “I would go blind just to see you.” Ditto with “I’m In Love With You,” a delicious wave of glistening pop. And “Oh Caroline” feels like it could have been the theme from a late ‘70s TV rom-com.
“Looking For Somebody (To Love)” has an ‘80s vibe with sped-up production elements and the smoky ballad “Human Too” has a Coldplay feel as Healy looks back on his transgressions: “I’m sorry that I quite liked seeing myself on the news.” And the sweeping, dreamy “About You” has a welcome presence not often on The 1975 albums: A woman’s voice front and center: that of Carly Holt, wife of guitarist Adam Hann.
Throughout are trademarks of The 1975 - orchestral sweeps, very personal snapshots and snippets of dialogue that muddy the production, like the ghostly image of a previous painting peeking through the new.
The self-titled first song has become an album tradition and this time the band has gone with an apology: To young men for the world they’re inheriting. “I’m sorry if you’re living and you’re 17,” Healy sings.
But the jewel is that fourth song, “Part of the Band,” where super-producer Jack Antonoff’s influence is most felt. “So many cringes in the heroin binges/I was coming off the hinges, living on the fringes,” go the lyrics. It’s the sound of a band reaching for the highest compliment: being funny in a foreign language.
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LOS ANGELES: Red Hot Chili Peppers aren’t ready to stop spicing up our lives this year. Their album “Return of the Dream Canteen,” comes out Friday, Oct. 14, their second album release of 2022, following “Unlimited Love” from April. Once again, they’ve joined forces with longtime producer and creative confidant Rick Rubin, with an early single being “Tippa My Tongue.” In between albums, the band won the prestigious Global Icon Award and performed at the MTV Video Music Awards. The band says the new album ”is everything we are and ever dreamed of being. It’s packed. Made with the blood of our hearts.” (AP)