Noah Kahan’s second album centers around the person he’s become since his 2019 alt-pop debut, Busyhead. After experiencing loss—both physically, with the death of his dog, and emotionally, through the end of friendships—Kahan uses his evocative lyricism (“Sometimes I hate it, my lack of patience/How sometimes love feels like a noun in some new foreign language,” he sings on “Bad Luck”) to weave a story of someone who’s gained perspective on the person he wants to be. Whether the tales are about introspective analysis (“Animal,” “Bad Luck”) or relationships with others (“Part of Me,” “Caves”), I Was / I Am is an album about growth, told in a beautiful blend of pop and folk that’s more confident, brighter, and more upbeat than his last.