As a student at a small Scottish university, whenever I told my British classmates I was from Vermont, they’d crease their brows trying to recall some characterizing tidbit about my home state.
“It’s the land of Bernie Sanders and Ben & Jerry’s,” I’d gently prompt them.
That remained my go-to line through college and beyond, right until Noah Kahan’s “Stick Season,” an album that explores the Strafford singer-songwriter’s relationship to his home with a detailed sense of place, exploded on the scene in late 2022. Suddenly people I met at parties were grilling me about Kahan’s relationship status and what it was like to grow up in quaint New England or attend Hanover High School, the alma mater I share with the artist.
I was grateful for another cultural touchstone to point to, one that articulated my and my friends’ ambivalence toward a place that can feel at once claustrophobic and comforting in its smallness.
My faith in Kahan began to falter, however, with the release of a deluxe version of “Stick Season” featuring new versions of the same songs with guest verses from household names such as Brandi Carlile and Hozier. Having grown up 10 minutes from Kahan’s home in Strafford, I couldn’t help but feel protective of the album’s portrayal of the Upper Valley. These re-recordings struck me as evidence of an artist more interested in racking up streams than preserving the work he’d made before he was a Grammy-nominated superstar.
“Noah Kahan: Out of Body,” a documentary released on Netflix last week about the singer-songwriter’s life after his big break, seems intended to bring Kahan, now 29, back down to earth. He’s older and seemingly more mature than the artist who wrote “Stick Season,” but still infatuated with Vermont and endlessly searching for a sense of peace.
Hinging on a pair of sold out shows at Fenway Park in 2024, the film deepens the exploration of complicated family dynamics Kahan addresses in his music, but it also treads new territory, such as the artist’s struggle with body dysmorphia and negative self image.
“I don’t know what I look like. No clue,” he says in the film.
“Out of Body” also finds Kahan wondering whether he can match the success of “Stick Season,” which has gained billions of streams times since its release. That question looms large with his forthcoming album, “The Great Divide,” poised for release on Friday.
“There’s a lot of pressure on what’s next,” he says towards the film’s beginning at his dad’s house in Strafford where he wrote parts of “Stick Season” during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Out of Body” may show Kahan playing to wailing crowds at Fenway and Madison Square Garden, but the scenes filmed in the Upper Valley felt like secrets hidden in plain in sight.
Who can fully appreciate the eerie lights that illuminate the Price Chopper parking lot on Miracle Mile after sundown or the bleak beauty of Route 132 in winter more than those of us who live here?
Watching the film on my living room couch, not far from where parts of it were shot, I felt a touch of pride knowing such an affectionate portrait of the Upper Valley was being beamed into people’s homes across the globe.
Of course, some details in Kahan’s music are knowable only to him and his family, who feature prominently in the film.
He expresses regret for writing about his family’s challenges without consulting them in a conversation with his younger brother, Simon Kahan. (I had a not insignificant crush on Simon my sophomore year of high school, so to see him in a Netflix documentary 10 years on was truly uncanny.)
Chief among the family’s struggles was when Kahan’s father was in a bicycle accident resulting in a traumatic brain injury when the artist was in eighth grade.
“…After the accident, this, like, brilliant guy who was always a little weird and embarrassing and maybe sometimes short-tempered, became slightly more weird, slightly more short-tempered,” Kahan says, sitting by a fire, his eyes bright with tears.
It’s an emotional scene, though a little difficult to square with Kahan’s regrets about oversharing about his family. Did they consent to their personal information being shared in such confessions this time around?
Later on, we see Kahan yearning to connect with his dad, and guilty about the anger he harbored toward him growing up.
“I feel like all of this is because I can’t figure out a way to let my dad be who he is,” Kahan says.
At one point, the two attempt to play a song they used to perform when Kahan was young. His dad struggles to hold the tune while strumming, and Kahan gently offers to play the chords and sing with him.
“You’re still young, that’s your fault. There’s so much you have to go through,” they sing.
Kahan isn’t just longing for his dad’s support in that moment, he’s able to offer some support himself.
It becomes clear in “Out of Body” that Kahan’s love for Vermont is deeply interwoven with his love for his family, and the two relationships have evolved in tandem.
In “Stick Season,” he sings about Vermont with the ambivalence of a young person reckoning with where he’s from and how it’s shaped him.
In the film, we see an older Kahan reaching for the comforts of a place that’s removed from the industry buzz of Nashville, where he and his then-fiancee, Brenna Nolan, also a Hanover High alum, had bought a house.
“I miss feeling like Vermont is my home. I felt like I belonged there. I feel like I was more imaginative at home,” Kahan says in “Out of Body.”
By the film’s end, he and Nolan, now his wife, mention that they’re looking for property in the Upper Valley.
“Being up here I don’t have to be confronted with my career all the time. I don’t have to think of music all the time,” Kahan says as he and Nolan drive through a snowy Strafford.
His words get at a steadiness that’s part of Vermont’s spell. It’s a pocket in the world that exists largely unaffected by the pretenses of fame, making it a kind of safe haven from which to create.
But Kahan’s not so naive as to think that moving home will cure the anxiety and insecurity that’s followed him around since childhood.
“I don’t know if any place can solve all my issues. Maybe it won’t be the solution…but at least I’ll be anxious and depressed in a place that’s actually anxious and depressing looking,” he says.
“Noah Kahan: Out of Body” is available for streaming on Netflix.
