003 | We'll All Be Here Forever
a music review of sorts
I’ve been struggling a bit with inspiration lately. It’s made me unmotivated to write here because I feel like I can only write if I Have Something to Say, which is the opposite of why I even started this in the first place.
So I’m going to do a review of sorts of Noah Kahan’s deluxe album, Stick Season (We’ll All Be Here Forever). These seven new songs are perfect. They continue the stories first introduced on the original run of Stick Season in such a beautiful, seamless way. There are references to so many other songs within the seven new songs. The bridges go crazy. It’s giving Taylor Swift. (I saw a tik tok about how Noah Kahan is just Taylor Swift for mentally ill people and I couldn’t agree more). I think I want to talk about this album track by track.
Your Needs, My Needs
For starters, this song only has 783,000 streams (as of this writing) which is CRIMINAL as far as I’m concerned (I recognized that it just dropped on Friday).
This song has been a grower for me. He released the bridge a long time ago, and the bridge goes CRAZY, so I was surprised when I first heard it in the context of the entire song. It’s sort of incongruous and I didn’t like that at first, but I think that might be the entire point. I think my favorite line might be, “You asked me why I wasn’t sayin’ a word / I’m naming the stars in the sky after you” like COME ON. Sir. SIR. What a line. To me, this whole song seems like it could be about miscommunication and how that can ruin a relationship, and I feel that that line really gets at the heart of that theme. Here’s a link to the lyrics. One of the comments on the Genius page says “I am deceased and this song is the cause.” I agree.
Favorite part of the song: the entire bridge. It’s so BIG. When he yells “SUBTLE CHANGE!!!!!! SHORTER DAYS!!!!!!!!” I feel myself start levitating.
Dial Drunk
Dial Drunk is THAT GIRL. She’s an icon. She’s a legend. And she is the moment. The freaking banjo??? Unreal. I think I saw that Noah himself is playing the banjo, at least on tour, which is honestly such a flex to me. (link to the lyrics here bb)
There’s so much that just WORKS about this song that it’s almost hard to even talk about. I think it’s easily one of the strongest songs lyrically and musically. Like, this man is spitting. The first two lines of the song are “I’m rememberin’ I promised to forget you now / but it’s rainin’ and I’m callin’ drunk” and I think that’s the perfect set up for the rest of the song. The idea of remembering to forget someone is so GENIUS.
The chorus gradually gets bigger and louder throughout the song, which I love. I sort of interpret that as the narrator becoming increasingly belligerent as this night goes on, so by the end he’s yelling at the cops because the ex won’t call him back. Also, the lines “Honey, it rang and rang, even the cops thought you were wrong / for hanging up” is just SO GOOD. Like, you know that what you’re doing is messed up if the freaking cops think it’s wrong!!!! Genius!!!!!!
I’m just going to put the bridge here because I feel that it speaks for itself:
Just wait I swear she’ll call me back? The reference to she calls me back? But she isn’t calling you back and everything is not alright? GENIUS. CHEF’S KISS.
Paul Revere
The title of this song couldn’t be more New Englandy. I love it.
This was the only song I hadn’t heard anything of before the album release. I don’t think Noah himself ever teased the song, which is interesting to me, and I really want to know why.
I feel like this song is sort of a sleeper for a lot of people, but I think it’s the strongest song thematically on the album, especially with how it further develops themes and ideas introduced on the original run of Stick Season.
In Homesick, Noah says “I would leave if only I could find a reason” and in Paul Revere he says “If I could leave, I would’ve already left.” (here are the lyrics) That’s the last line of the song, but it directly contradicts everything he’s said prior to this. The chorus literally starts:
“One day, I’m gonna cut it clear / Ride like Paul Revere / And, when they ask me who I am / I’ll say, “I’m not from around here””
The outro really solidifies the meaning of this song. We’re reintroduced to the dead dog that’s mentioned in The View Between Villages, and it’s a reminder that, even if you leave your hometown, everything that happened to you there is forever imprinted on your mind and in your soul. You can’t really get away from it, no matter how badly you might think you want to.
The very end of this song is just a slow fadeout of A LOT of instrumentation. The instruments in this song are so haunting, and this fadeout really gives them a chance to shine. I sort of picture a lone rider in the distance when I hear these instruments. Put ur cowboy boots on and lets go girls!!!!
No Complaints
This is really where things take a turn and get sad. as. hell. for the rest of the album. It’s rude honestly if you ask me!!!!!
The rhyme scheme on this song goes crazy. Our boy is SPITTING. The use of “different” a bunch of times and then the rhyme with “distant” at the beginning of verse two scratches my brain in such a SPECIFIC way. I love it. (lyrics)
This is another song where it feels like you almost have to go line by line to be able to dissect and explain everything he’s writing about. I also think this song makes a lot more sense if you know the story about Noah’s experience writing the deluxe songs. Here’s a video where he explains this:
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TLDR: he reached out to his record label when Stick Season came out and said ‘I want to do a deluxe album with new songs. I’m feeling awesome.’ And then when he started trying to write, he couldn’t do it. He was worried he’d never make anything as good as Stick Season again. He stopped taking his meds because he thought they were interfering with his creativity. I think this is likely where No Complaints was born.
Verse two is the standout part of this song for me. He really breaks down how it feels when your meds make you totally numb to the world around you, i.e.: “Now the pain’s different / it still exists, it just escapes different / and evades vision, makes the rain different / makes the news boring and my rage distant.” We get this explanation of his lack of feeling, and then at the end of the verse we get the trade-off: “But I can finally eat / and I can fall asleep / it’s fine, fine, fine.”
All of this to say: SERTRALINE GANG RISE
Call Your Mom
This song should come with a trigger warning!!!!!! (lyrics here)
This one is a DOOZY. For starters, the title is literally almost a “ur mom” joke, which is hilarious to me because the song is objectively NOT FUNNY at all. This is extremely on-brand.
I think this song is pretty clearly about a friend’s suicide attempt. I’ve seen some folks hypothesize that it’s specifically about an overdose, accidental or otherwise. This interpretation also makes sense to me.
One of my favorite things about this song is the way he sings the chorus. For the majority of the song, the chorus is sung in a sort of quiet, falsetto, whispery sort of way. It sounds almost like he’s sitting next to this person’s hospital bed and talking to them directly, the way you talk in a hospital, in hushed tones. And then the bridge comes and he’s begging this person to ‘give themselves a reason’ to stay alive. It’s loud and cacophonous and sounds exactly the way you’d beg someone to stay with you.
There’s something about the repetition of “I’ll call your mom” that’s so incredibly tender and touching because who else do you want with you during something that feels impossible to make it through? And who better to call your mom than the person who’s driven all night and been with you on the phone through all of this?
This is one you sort of have to let wash over you to take it all in.
You’re Gonna Go Far
This one makes me EMOTIONAL AS HELL. Noah really said, “Oh, you moved away from your parents? You’re the only one of your siblings that lives in a different place? Let me make this one HURT.” And hurt it does if you’re the long-distance kid!!!! Here are the lyrics if you like pain.
I love the portion of the chorus that says, “The birds will still sing / your folks will still fight / the boards will still creak / the leaves will still die” because it’s like ??? everything you know and is familiar to you ??? will continue in your absence ??? and it’ll still be here when you come back ??? because we’ll all be here forever ??? Folk Malone has inserted the knife and is twisting it endlessly!!!!
To me, this song sounds like it’s written from the perspective of the parent of the person who’s left. They want their kid to know that they understand why the kid had to leave (“if you wanna go far / then you gotta go far”). They want their kid to know that they don’t need to feel guilty for leaving and that they’re proud of them (“we ain’t angry at you, love / you’re the greatest thing we’ve lost”). The final message is, you can always come back, anytime you want, because “we’ll all be here forever.”
The View Between Villages - Extended
The View Between Villages is my favorite track on the original run of Stick Season. The extended version is no different. (lyrics)
I think this song is the ultimate closer for an album. It might even be my favorite closing track on any album ever. The chorus is perfect and I wouldn’t change one single thing about it. I almost start crying every time I hear it!!!!!
The addition of the two older people talking about Strafford, VT (Noah’s hometown) and what it means to them, what kind of people are present there, that they were happy to grow up there, is truly the icing on the most delicious cake. Stick Season is an album about the complicated feelings related to your teeny, tiny hometown. It’s about how you spend your youth wishing to leave, so you miss out on all the good parts of being there. These voice recordings are able to give us perspective that we wouldn’t otherwise have, that maybe it’s not as bad as you remember, that this community you’ve always been apart of will support you, even if you spent your childhood wishing they wouldn’t.
Someone on Genius said “this is exactly what being from a small town feels like.” I couldn’t agree more.