With tired eyes fighting the cold leaking in through the single-paned window behind your desk, music becomes some warmth for quiet days. Stuck whittling the hours away, the pipeline of rot and thought connected to your hands, splashing away with keystroke after keystroke, what does it amount to? Eventually, the breaking point is reached. There is finite work to offer even when it feels endless. Paul Revere, the latest track from Noah Kahan and featuring Gregory Alan Isakov as a bit-part support to re-release an album not two years old, feels like an expectedly wrought, stomp-and-holler tribute to a silversmith or musician. Catch it in the right mood and enjoy, but there is still a lingering doubt reigning over this one, the twee cheekiness paired with the sternness of folk acoustics burns right through your skull.
Is it an interest in Kahan or the collaborations he provides? Sam Fender and Hozier made for quite the buzz in circles which have defected from clubs to pubs, and so the Paul Revere track (a tribute to the eponymous rock legend, not an American silversmith), feels right at home. Soft acoustics and the reminiscent strokes of half-hearted mentions of Revere and The Raiders’ greatest hits. At its core is a conventional way of pushing out memories of old. Kahan does well to indicate these are his memories and shares them with Isakov, whose solid collaboration here leaves little impact but still feels necessary for overhauling a song not two years old.
There is a sway and flow to this Kahan and Isakov track which feels nice enough, but then is it enough for a collaborative adaptation to feel light? In this instance, yes. It was not a lyrical titan to begin with and the honest recollection within is enough to light the fire of sincerity. What it lacks in a clarifying specific, a moment of tribulation or triumph in the face of drowning out those brain-rattling memories, it makes up for in the broad strokes of country and folk effectiveness. This is what listeners of Kahan want. Tremendous spectacles of banjo playing and intimate selections of vague memory so they can deposit their thoughts. Paul Revere does just that, and though it may succeed it is the instrumental bridge between those desires to be a stranger in a common land and listening to the greats of history which bring it beyond a level of vaguely acceptable quality.
One of the great joys of future listens is allowing the vice-like grip and focus on lyrical efforts to drift away. What brings out the best in Kahan here is the constant acoustics, which flutter through with a grand momentum. It marks a relentless rise in exceptional work, guiding his voice to higher points he should not quite hit. Yet here we are. Isakov adds those essential twangs of extra, layered folk style to a track which already had plenty. We are neither better nor worse off for this additional piece of Kahan, though it is difficult to mount any intense desire to go around and around when his works begin to bleed into one another. Stick Season gains one of its many adaptations – though adds little to its already clustered core.
