133: Ben Kweller - Dollar Store (Ft. Waxahatchee)
I've always thought of record collections as friends, a mish-mash of casts and characters that pepper your life. Some stumble in at just the right time, stay around forever, pure and true. Others drift in and then out again, for no particularly reason. There never has to be a reason. Then there are the ones that burn brightly for a short time, a bright flash of sentimentality when you really needed it the most.
Ben Kweller was the latter of those for me. I discovered him amid an avalanche of discovery, 20 years ago now, as the internet was opening up just enough for me to refine and define my tastes, and also when the joy of music as a form of discovery also took root.
He was known, then, as a prodigious young talent, a 20 year old fresh-faced singer-songwriter who released three truly exceptional records in a short burst of inspiration, co-headlined a tour with Death Cab during their major label/Plans breakthrough, recorded with Gil Norton (Pixies, Foo Fighters et al).
And then, well, either he changed or I did, or else time and life just did its thing and kept rolling away from us both. I loved those records, so much. To hear those songs now throws me right back into my days of self-discovery, late nights spent listening to records from artists I'd never heard, drawing maps like spiderwebs that connected bands to record labels or producers to collaborators, on and on and on, forming the musical spine of my life.
Ben went on making records, releasing new collections in 2009, 2012 and 2021. If I saw them at all then I just glanced them in my periphery, walking on with a flicker of recognition, a little nod to someone I used to know. I didn't seek them out, regardless.
And now, like those very unique bonds of friendship that lie dormant while we shift and grow and change, I'm back listening to Ben Kweller in 2025 - and it still feels wonderful. We've both changed, I'm sure of it, but those changes have led us back to similar places, notably to a landscape that includes both MJ Lenderman and Waxahatchee, both of whom feature on Ben's brand new album, Cover The Mirrors.
A little over three months ahead of its release, it's the latter of those voices that winds its way into the album's latest single. Tender and idiosyncratic in all the ways I used to love, 'Dollar Store' is a gem of a song, lyrically vivid, Katie Crutchfield's voice like a shadow behind it all, a space it occupies so beautifully. Wrapped up in a little over three-minutes, with a crunchy, buoyant change-of-pace finale, it's a timely, unexpected reminder of what drew me in all those years ago.
Time passes, skin sags, old songs find new voices. You can forget to remember they're there, but the bonds remain, tiny little glimpses of the journey from there to here.
Cover The Mirrors is out May 30, via Noise Company
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