Grow

There is a weariness baked into the bones of this song — not defeat, but the particular exhaustion of someone who has spent years running from the place that made them. Built on acoustic guitar with a sparse, unhurried arrangement, "Grow" moves at the pace of reluctant introspection. Kahan's voice is rough-hewn and unpolished in the best possible way, carrying a hoarse authenticity that makes every word feel dragged out of him rather than performed. The production stays close and intimate, as if recorded in a small room with no ambition to fill arenas. Emotionally, the song sits in that uncomfortable space between self-awareness and self-destruction — the protagonist knows exactly what patterns are holding him back and watches himself repeat them anyway. The lyrical core is about the peculiar paralysis of hometowns, how a place can simultaneously wound you and be the only thing that feels real. There's a folk lineage here — Vermont winters, working-class roots, the confessional singer-songwriter tradition — but Kahan filters it through millennial anxiety in a way that feels immediate rather than nostalgic. You reach for this song on long drives through familiar landscapes you've been trying to leave behind, when the gap between who you are and who you meant to become feels most visible.