A year ago a friend from high school told me I needed to listen to this album that had just come out because it was by a local guy and you know Upper Valley gotta roll for one another, ya know?
I gave it a listen, liked some tracks on Spotify and then swiftly went back to cranking the Home Alone soundtrack or something I'm not really sure.
Back in August though, I went back home to visit my Mum for the first time in four years and spent 2 weeks roaming around the woods in Vermont, inhaling Folklore by Taylor Swift and then stumbling back on Stick Season and suddenly that shit hit different.
I loved growing up in New England. Did I like chipping ice off my car or getting tardy slips because the doors were literally frozen shut? Hard pass. Did I love that cruising to Walmart to buy car air fresheners and Elvis CD's to sing scream on the way home was a thrilling Friday night? I mean...not at the time. Did I think it was fun to fucking pulverize a deer in Cornish in the Driver's Ed car? Heavily traumatic.
But I wouldn't change it.
The slush and the numb toes, sneaking 30 racks into the woods to sit by a fire and complain about how boring life is or jumping into gorgeous rivers under the watchful eye of looming mountains.
At the time my grass was always greener. I was plucked from Australia at 11 and thrown into a literal blizzard. I craved sunshine and a tan. I thought life was bigger and better and more exciting anywhere but here (and honestly it probably was.) I didn't care that the leaves in October were gorgeous and people travelled for miles to witness them. My jaded ass blasted down 89 flipping them the hypothetical bird.
It was slow and it was safe. Although we all scattered like marbles the moment they let us be free, running for Boston and New York and Philly and beyond, I think hindsight is a wonderful thing and as I get older the joy that was had in the bubble settles in.
Going back home after so long and wandering around Sunapee, looking at teenagers thinking I should know them before realising that all my peers are now lawyers, teachers, mothers and other tax paying old people was quite a trip.
Whilst home, I inhaled Pizza Chef for like two straight weeks as if I was 14 and it was Friday night post basketball game, or it was the summer and we got bored of wandering around aimlessly or I had just finished a shift (First Job shit you know?)
I thought about how the kids at the day-care I worked at in Highschool were now graduating and wondered if they were also bursting at the seams to get the fuck out of this snow globe like we were?
It was good to be home for a while (in the Summer...catch me not visiting in February, sorry kids) and ever since I've left, I've had Stick Season on repeat. Honestly chisel that shit onto my tombstone at this point. How an album chews up a place and spits it out so beautifully kind of blows my mind. At this time I would like to personally apologise to any unsuspecting victim I've come across during my downward Noah Kahan spiral who has had to hear about street names they never drove on, speed traps they never had to worry about and ugly black melting snow patches they didn't have to hurdle.
I'm just trying to set the scene through mildly rose coloured glasses, sue me!
10/10. Would listen again...and again...and again.
(Although if anyone told me to my face they wanted to hold my hand until it decomposed I think I would like... change my fucking name....just sayin')
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