‘Stick Season’: Back Road Nostalgia Meets Seasonal Depression
Grab your Dunkin’ and let’s get into it
Small-town, Vermont-grown Noah Kahan had quite the revival this past October when he released his third album, Stick Season, attracted a large following of New England natives who embraced his work with open arms. His recent resurgence can be accredited to the song that gives the album its name which took Tiktok by storm, giving his music a virality which people couldn’t get enough of.
While Kahan was known for his work in the pop-sphere with his well-known collaboration on the song “Hurt Somebody” with Julia Michaels, this album has a much different feel. After moving back to Vermont to live with his parents during quarantine, it’s clear the lockdown-small-town nostalgia helped push his music from pop to alternative indie-folk.
It isn’t even about simply being from the Northeast that makes this album so special for me. Yes, I am mean, and yes, it’s because I grew up in New England, but there is so much more to this album than that.
“Homesick” touches on the melancholy feeling of romanticizing your hometown and wanting to return, while simultaneously complaining about it and its nuances the entire visit. In “Growing Sideways”, Kahan contemplates his own struggle with mental illness singing, “I ignore things, and I move sideways”, which speaks to the familiar winding road many of us take to move our pain and compartmentalize it until we forget what it was in the first place.
My personal favorite, “All My Love” speaks to a past love saying, “Now I know your name, but not who you are. It's all okay. There ain't a drop of bad blood.” While I may not be experiencing what he sings about in this song firsthand, it pings a deep part in my stomach where I remember people who I used to be friends with but now only text to wish them a happy birthday.
This album isn’t for your average listener. It’s for the people who spent their free time in high school in Target parking lots eating McDonald’s with their friends. The 20-somethings who dread walking into their local coffee shop because they know they’ll see someone they don’t want to, or the people whose hearts ache when they start to see the leaves falling around them because they know the bleak winter is right around the corner.
At the end of the day, Stick Season is for the people who have a complicated relationship with the town or people they call home despite the time and energy they might spend reminiscing about it.
Whether you like this album or not, I will be bumping this in my Subaru for many icy Upstate months to come. Well-done Noah.
Listen to Stick Season on Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube
