Ben Kweller stopped by Urban Lounge in Salt Lake City in support of his emotionally poignant new album, Cover The Mirrors – one of our favorite records of the year and, what I once thought was impossible, Kweller’s best album yet. The album arrives two years after his son, Dorian, tragically passed away, and it incorporates some of the lyrics his son wrote while following in his dad’s footsteps. It touches on themes of grief and isolation, yet remains bright, inspiring, and all-too-human.
I remember the buzz in indie circles around Ben Kweller’s debut Sha Sha, an album filled with catchy pop songs smartly written by a young promising songwriter. It always seemed like a daunting task to have to release a follow up to his debut album which is adored by all of his fans, including myself. The memories I have listening to that album in high school and college are something I’ll never forget. I kept asking myself, how would Kweller navigate the set list for this tour? He has to play the classics, but when you have 12 new songs that are all each standouts in their own right, how do you merge the playful and whimsical nature of the early material with the seriousness of the new album? Well, the first thing he did was to get the crowd to sing along to their favorite songs from 20 years ago with as much joy as possible.
From the first song he made his mission statement clear, and that was: I know you came to have a good time and I’m here to deliver on that promise. The sense of community was strong on that Monday night at Urban Lounge in SLC and this is only possible because of Kweller’s song writing, one stand out moment early on in the set was during “Family Tree,” where he got the crowd to sing along during the chorus. At this point I was worried it would be primarily a throwback set with not much from the new album, but two songs later, Kweller brought up the unfortunate events that led to the new album and he went straight into “Trapped” which is one of the highlights in the sea of nothing but highs on the album.
The rest of the set was a mix of old classics, and new gut-punching resonating songs from his full discography. The band was completely in sync with Kweller. Kweller brought up playing Salt Lake City before and on one of those tours he had My Morning Jacket opening for him and continued to make jokes about how bands have good luck being his opener. Well, I hope this new era for Kweller is the beginning of his good luck because this new album needs as many ears on it as possible. It feels like the beginning of a second career arc for this talented musician from Austin, TX.
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