Are you ready for more singer-songwriter-y folk with melodic pop-rock tendencies? Noah Kahan is bringing it to you. He just worries about its shape. Directed by Nick Sweeney, Noah Kahan: Out of Body hits Netflix the same month as The Great Divide, his fourth full-length, and was shot in 2024 around the shows that would become the Live From Fenway Park album. In the doc, we meet his fiancée and his family, visit Vermont and Nashville, and learn about Kahan’s lifelong struggle with his body image. And all the while, he’s writing new songs. Or trying to, anyway.
The Gist: “After all this, what is my purpose?” Noah Kahan: Out of Body highlights two big moments from the concluding months of his 85-date world tour in support of 2022’s Stick Season, his sold-out pairs of shows at both Madison Square Garden and Fenway Park in Boston. And Kahan will be the first to tell you he was playing small clubs just a few years ago, that these shows feature the most people he’s ever played for. So this doc does not capture a star who has forgotten where he came from. In fact, of Vermont, you could say it’s kind of obsessed.
Noah Kahan grew up with two brothers and a sister in the Upper Valley area of Vermont where it meets the New Hampshire border, and Out of Body gets a kick of out interviewing the locals. It’s a place where cold weather, hearty living, and outdoor activities are all the rage, and Kahan notes these influences in his songwriting. He also shows off the room at his dad’s house where he brought his songs to Instagram Live during the pandemic, complete with lyrics scrawled all over tabletops. We meet Kahan’s parents, his brothers and sister, and we hear how growing up in Stafford informed him as a person. “I think young men in small towns feel like reputation is everything.”
This whole time, as Kahan skis with high school pals, drinks PBRs in his brother’s garage, and shows off life in Nashville with his fiancée Brenna – new house, new dog, and spending that sweet world tour money – he’s also supposed to be writing new material for the Stick Season follow-up. We hear from his managers, and that’s plural because this is the major labels, and those guys talk about Kahan’s musical direction like he’s a data point on an ascending balance sheet. And we watch Kahan strum with frustration, and ask himself big questions about his purpose as a songwriter, without achieving much in the way of output.
“I have nothing. Just diddling around on an acoustic guitar like any other dude on a college lawn somewhere.” Kahan says becoming successful has altered his comfort zone to the point that he can’t find friction enough to fuel his songwriting. And this makes him look inward, to issues with disordered eating and body image he has confronted for years. He notes that whether social media says his show was great or that it sucked, either way he locks himself in a hotel room and binge-eats Taco Bell. Things gotta change.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? They’re pretty far apart musically. But Noah Kahan and BTS face similar creative demands and industry pressures in this one and The Return, their respective comeback documentaries. Kahan worked with producer and National member Aaron Dessner on the upcoming Great Divide; Dessner and his upstate New York studio features heavily in Taylor Swift’s Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions. And catching shots in Out of Body of Noah Kahan at his old New York apartment and singing onstage at Madison Square Garden, we thought of Ed Sheeran running around the city with his guitar in the recent One Shot: A Musical Experience.
Performance Worth Watching: We really like Noah’s Mom and Dad in here. On one hand, you’ve got Josh at his house, “I’m not a hoarder, I’m a careful collector,” and his endearing, erratic nature. On the other, Lauri, backstage at MSG, drinking a Liquid Death, and busting her son’s chops for writing lyrics about his parents’ divorce.
Memorable Dialogue: Kahan is philosophical about his issues with disorded eating and body dysmorphia. While he works through what works for him, he does not claim to know any larger answers. “When I look in a mirror, I feel like I don’t know what my body actually looks like.”
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: So when does the Noah Kahan reality experience drop? Or maybe Out of Body is that. As music documentaries go, this one falls into the category of introduction, as it rides the growing musical popularity of its subject to feature him for Netflix audiences. (Lyrics are included onscreen in a manner that’s like “Here, match these songs you know with this guy you might not.”) But while Kahan’s jams are often front-and-center, with Body including extended takes on “Come Over” and “Drunk Dial” and plenty of footage from the Fenway and MSG shows, it barely enters a recording studio and does not feature cutaways to other musicians and collaborators. Out of Body is more interested in where the music he makes intersects with Noah Kahan’s life being lived. Tell us a sequence where he operates a forge and other blacksmithing equipment in his brother’s garage, while they crush PBRs and talk about growing up, doesn’t feel like an episode of a reality show called, like, “Noah Goes Home” or “Kahan You Hear Me Now.”
But a big part of this feel also comes from the fact that Noah Kahan is funny, engaging, and thoughtful on camera. The humor that comes out in his shows is natural, and in the doc, it’s also mashed against where Kahan gets serious about his own body issues. While we were intrigued with his stabs and misses at writing new songs, we started to watch Out of Body as if it were a lifestyle profile, and not a music doc at all.
Our Call: Stream It. “I’m forging the hearts and minds of folk-pop!” Noah Kahan offers a lighthearted look at his music career in Out of Body. But when he goes back home to Vermont, things get more thoughtful.
Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.