Life has not always been kind to Ben Kweller.
The 43-year-old Jewish musician has dealt with more than his fair share of heartbreak. In 2013, Kweller, his wife Liz, and their two young sons almost died from carbon monoxide poisoning while on vacation in New Mexico. They were told that another 15 minutes and none of them would have survived.
Kweller disappeared from the music scene for almost six years after that traumatic night, struggling with depression and brain damage.
Then, in February 2023, Kweller’s 16-year-old son Dorian was killed in a car accident. The loss of Dorian, himself a talented musician who went by the stage name Zev (his middle name), left the family shattered.
This time, though, Kweller leaned into his music as a coping mechanism.
His new album, released on May 30, is called “Cover the Mirrors,” a title that Jews will recognize as a reference to the traditional Jewish mourning practice of covering the mirrors in a shiva house. It is a deeply personal, emotional album that somehow also feels appropriate for our current cultural moment.
Many critics are quick to point out that the songs on “Cover the Mirrors” resemble the process of grieving itself, moving from songs that express grief, anger, depression and denial to something resembling acceptance.
But I’ve found that many critics miss the complexity of grief expressed throughout the album — grief that can only be fully understood with a knowledge of Jewish mourning practices — especially, as the title indicates, the act of covering mirrors. Acknowledging the album’s intrinsic Jewishness allows for a more nuanced understanding of the songs themselves, grief in general and, more broadly, the messy nature of the world we live in.
While there is no halakhic order to cover mirrors in a house of mourning, it is a long-held custom that some believe is meant to remind mourners to focus on introspection rather than human vanities. Kabbalists suggest a more superstitious reason: that when someone dies, demons and evil spirits lurk, trying to fill the void left by loss. Though they aren’t visible to the naked eye, they can be seen in mirrors. Covering mirrors, then, is a way to block these negative forces.
No matter the explanation one prefers for the tradition, what seems important is that covering mirrors allows mourners to focus on their own feelings. This is not a locking away of grief, but a tacit acknowledgement of pain and darkness.
This is exactly what Kweller’s album does: It brings Kweller’s grief into the open. It is not about accepting loss, but about living with heartbreak — something many of us are trying to figure out how to do on a daily basis. Whether he meant to or not, Kweller has created an album that allows listeners to sit with our own complex feelings and collective grief about the current state of the world.
