Noah Kahan performs at Rogers Stadium.STEPH MONTANI/Supplied
I’m not a fan of Noah Kahan. The Vermont-raised folk-pop artist specializes in lyrically detailed vulnerability set to uncomplicated chord changes and melodies for the masses. He’s a public brooder who uplifts formulaically.
But if one believes that artistic worth in pop music is measured simply by whether people like it, Kahan might be bulletproof to criticism. Certainly the 50,000 mostly female fans at Toronto’s Rogers Stadium on Sunday like his music, to judge by the chorus of keening voices singing along to his emotive storytelling.
Early on he asked if the crowd was ready to get miserable with him. Later he noted the pleasant weather but promised he would make it rain and that it would be a “sad night.” Misery loves company, and Kahan is open for business.
The stage scenery was rural: At first a farmhouse, from which he emerged through a screen door to sing the corn-fed, banjoed folk-rock of American Cars, off his fourth and latest album, The Great Divide. It’s a family drama: “Honey, we’re fragile, you’ve always been so tough; you know that I missed you, you always come runnin’ back.”
Backed by a six-piece band, the 29-year-old artist wore a threadbare shirt, patched jeans and a beard, his long hair pigtailed. Rugged but fragile, then. Nothing if not self-aware, Kahan has given himself nicknames in the past: “Depressed Keanu Reeves” and “Jewish Capaldi” (a nod to the similarity between his music and Scottish singer-songwriter Lewis Capaldi’s), to cite two.
STEPH MONTANI/Supplied
His career received a super-charged boost when Olivia Rodrigo’s acoustic cover of his song Stick Season went viral in 2023.
Kahan’s heartland music leads one to believe he was raised on the Wallflowers and the Counting Crows. The use of mandolins, fiddles and affecting harmonic upsweeps suggests an admiration for the West London folk scene of the 2010s. In a nutshell, Kahan does dime-store Mumford & Sons.
He cussed a lot when addressing the audience – he seemed unable to string more than two sentences together without using expletives that make it into his lyrics as well. His attempt at humourous banter was scatological, stemming from an incident in which a fan defecated in the audience at a recent Philadelphia concert.
The stage backdrops shifted throughout the concert, focusing on a gas station here and a general store there. A utility pole, street light and an outdated public phone were in view. Kahan sang Dial Drunk from the back of what was apparently a police car; for Willing and Able he took to a rooftop.
Excitement reached a fever pitch when Kahan carried his acoustic guitar to a secondary stage that protruded into the audience. With their phone cameras, crying young women captured the moment instead of living in it. A man in the crowd proposed marriage to a woman. Catching wind of it, Kahan made them promise not to get divorced.
A three-piece horn section brought aboard for the encore set gave the music oomph and pizzazz it otherwise lacked.
In a recent article published in The Atlantic, Tyler Austin Harper wrote that Miller Lite was a bad beer but an incredible beverage. “It is neither complicated nor offensive, and it derives its magic from this bland alchemy, this delicate equipoise of fizzy nothingness.”
One could say a lot of the same about Kahan’s music − not the evocative lyrics or his adequate singing, but the sounds that carry the words. It’s bad music, but great listening. Kahan promised a sad night he had no intention of delivering.
A stadium of fans stood all evening, often serenading with beatific expressions on their faces. They could have just as easily been riding together in a beat-up car with the radio blaring Kahan at high volume. What can you say? Some music just goes down cleaner and easier than the rest.
Noah Kahan performs at BC Place in Vancouver on Aug. 28.