Noah Kahan
Main Stage
★★★★☆
A few hours before headlining Electric Picnic, Noah Kahan takes a spin on the giant Ferris wheel looming over the festival. To be whisked to the top of the world is an almost too perfect metaphor for the singer from rural Vermont, whose career exploded when his willowy torch song Stick Season, a raw meditation on lockdown loneliness, went viral on TikTok. But has it been too rapid a rise – and is he ready to top the bill at Electric Picnic?
Going on stage in a green suit, Kahan seems in two minds about whether his big date has arrived years ahead of schedule. “I can’t believe I’m headlining this festival,” he says, adding that he isn’t sure he deserves it but that he’s honoured to be invited. “I got all my tricks from Irish singer-songwriters,” he says. “You guys are sad as f**k”.
The 27-year-old may owe his success at least in part to social media, but his music feels like an antidote to the 21st century’s always-on culture. Raised away from the bright lights, he pours small-town misery into affecting ballads such as his opening song, Dial Drunk, which recalls his tearaway adolescence and an arrest for driving under the influence.
Kahan has collaborated with Hozier, and in addition to resembling long-lost twins united in their advocacy for luxuriant facial hair, they tap into the same wellspring of thoughtful angst. The American’s singing style meanwhile resembles that of Marcus Mumford, of the folk poshos Mumford & Sons. But don’t let that put you off: Kahan’s lyrics are impressively unflinching – Call Your Mom, for instance, circles the fraught topic of self-harm. He also has that rare talent for capturing male spiritual pain without sounding like someone blowing off steam on an internet message board.
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The big question is whether a rural American singing about his life of woe has enough fireworks to fuel a headline set on day one of Electric Picnic. To his immense credit, Kahan makes it work, through a mix of what comes off as genuine humility and a knack for bunging vast choruses into his downcast songs.
He finishes with Stick Season, a tune he says is okay to be fed up with because it’s “played so much”. But judging by the rush to the front, the Electric Picnic audience is a long way from Stick Season sick. There will be more blockbusting shows on the Main Stage over the weekend. (No pressure, Kylie, but they seem to have changed the festival date especially for you.) Still, as an appetite whetter for the fun to come, you can only applaud the manner in which Kahan came, saw and conquered.
