Ben Kweller - Cover the Mirrors (2025) Hi-Res

C O V E R T H E M I R R O R S is my seventh album and it's the most personal, emotionally raw project I've ever worked on. When Dorian died in 2023 I was overcome with the need to make music. I didn't care what came out of me because it was the only way I could find peace in my earth-shattering grief. It's hard not to focus on everything I've lost and in the depths of my sorrow I realized that something was gained. I can only describe it as an additional layer in the spectrum of understanding. My highs are higher and my lows are lower. My love is deeper and my calling is stronger. Cover The Mirrors is helping me cope with my new reality and these songs are part of that journey.

Ben Kweller’s latest, Cover The Mirrors, is an emotional wrecking ball, coming after the tragic loss of his teen son. It’s expectedly sad, but also revelatory at times, as Kweller reflects not only on the brutal reality of losing a child, but through grieving looks at the larger picture of life.

“It’s a full-circle type of album,” Kweller says. “There’s a lot of reflecting—not only reflecting on the loss of Dorian. I’m also taking an inventory of everything else. My whole time on Earth. Everything I’ve created as an artist.”

You can hear the grief in a song like the emotional “Depression” (featuring Jason Schwartzman’s musical alter ego Coconut Records), the brooding “Don’t Care,” and the opening track “Going Insane,” a beautifully sad piano ballad.

Schwartzman isn’t the only guest that helped Kweller on this emotional record; Waxahatchee guests on “Dollar Store,” The Flaming Lips help with “Killer Bee,” and MJ Lenderman joins on the album’s closer “Oh Dorian,” named for Kweller’s late son. That last song is a beautiful distillation of a father’s love, admiration, and uncertainty all contained in a four-minute song.

Cover The Mirrors is understandably an album soaked in melancholy, but just like listening to a Nick Drake record, there is bit of catharsis in hearing someone one sing through the pain, even if it’s different from your own. Cover The Mirrors is a remarkably beautiful expression of love and loss.