Vermont singer Noah Kahan packs B.C. Place with adoring fans at sold out show.
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Noah Kahan made me cry.
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OK, he didn’t. But the slogan printed on the back of one of his tour Tees certainly rang true with many in the crowd at B.C. Place. I Sang Along to Every Song at Noah Kahan should definitely be a future merch slogan.
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Not even Taylor Swift has fans belting out every lyric to every single song all night long quite like Kahan fans. Not only do they know all the words, they harmonized in key as well. It made the whole vibe of The Great Divide Tour date in Vancouver as much of an evangelical arena crusade as a concert.
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It’s a point not lost on Kahan, who joked about it not being a Christian rock concert.
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“Even though there are this many acoustic guitars on stage, this isn’t Christian rock as, hey, Jewish,” he said.
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But the Vermont folk pop singer knows the spiritual connection his music has with his fans and it’s clear he loves spreading the positive vibes in every venue he visits. From the moment his crack six-piece backing band drove into the opener American Cars to the final fading notes of Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5, this was an evening of preaching love in all its ugly appearances applied with back porch jam session stylings.
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Not that anything in the 26 song set was left to chance.
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The cabin-in-the-Vermont Green Mountains stage set, complete with rural gas station and what looked like an actually K-car station wagon were folksy. The band’s goofy choreography was stuff a dad band in the garage might think up after a few brews. But under all that casual veneer, the pacing and location moves from the mainstage to B stage to the cabin roof and back were precise.
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This isn’t to say that America’s answer to Mumford & Sons by way of John Denver and others is too slick. It’s just that his live show is all about delivering songs such as Dial Drunk and Dan in a way that is certain to have no jarring edges or endings. Even with the occasional curse word tossed in, this music is kid-friendly.
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Nothing was spoken or sung that the predominantly young, female audience hasn’t heard before. One of the things that really works in his material is the honesty in his excellent lyrics. It makes him stand out from so many musicians mining the exact same terrain.
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Songs such as Willing and Able tell it like it is: “Cause if I call you out, I’m an a — hole/ But I tell the truth when I drink/ So come home, let’s fight ’bout the childhood lie/ We don’t care what the other one thinks.” They are a breath of fresh air in the world of manosphere mumblings delivered by inked apes set to AI arrangements.
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Kahan may suffer from sameness in his sound, but he doesn’t seem anything but decent addressing his adoring audience.
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Plus, his concert proved time and again that he is still finding his way around all this superstardom. For every ‘hey ho’ predictable rising chorus in so many songs, there are those stick-in-your-head progressions that make You’re Gonna Go Far and Deny Deny Deny that are bound to become classics of contemporary pop.
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As he grows as an artist, one can only hope that he delves deeper into bluegrass-tinged tunes like Paid Time Off and folk hymn-favouring Pain Is Cold Water. Both of these were show stoppers delivered by him and the band on the B-stage performing mostly on acoustic instruments.
