Noah Kahan released a vinyl version of his 2020 EP Cape Elizabeth for Record Store Day last year. This year, he’s marking the EP’s four-year anniversary with a post about the record that he says “woke me up.”

“Cape Elizabeth isn’t just an EP to me,” he writes on his Instagram Story. “It’s a line in the sand that I have never stepped over again. Music is supposed to be fun. Music isn’t supposed to make you bored and depressed and jealous and angry. It should be the same thing it was to you as a kid; a magic trick that makes you and the listener understand each other and yourselves.”

“Cape Elizabeth was the first time in so long I felt like a kid again,” he continues. “When you guys accepted this EP with open arms it genuinely rearranged the cells in my brain and completely changed my life. I remembered something. I try to never forget it.”

Noah recorded Cape Elizabeth during the pandemic, and it was an acoustic, folk-influenced project, unlike his 2021 album I Was/I Am, which he’s said was more influenced by what his record label wanted from him.

Speaking about the EP, he told Variety last year, “It was the first time that I let myself just not care about how it sounded at the end … I just wanted it to make me happy. And to see it connect with people really inspired me to write Stick Season. It kind of gave me the confidence to be like, ‘All right, this niche-specific storytelling stuff can actually connect with people in a more universal way.’”

“I really owe it all to that EP, and it’s still probably my favorite piece of work I’ve made. I just love it.”

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