Brewster’s long awaited debut full-length is a fine example of just how personal the craft of the modern singer-songwriter can be.

Forever Better Kissers glows with a casual familiarity, largely due to its mix of detailed, confidential lyrics and intimate arrangements. Hints and name-drops of suburban-hometown New Jersey locations and references to melancholic high school memories give the album an almost nakedly personal aura, like as if you have speakers hooked up straight to the artists’ brain.

The overall production and sound of the record is superbly fascinating. With a wide range of dimensions, you can hardly predict what you might hear from one moment to the next. Even within one song, Brewster can slide from warm, lo-fi acoustics (that resemble home demos) seamlessly into a clean, sleek and well-balanced sonic atmosphere that allows his full band to enter the picture and completely flourish. While many of the tracks here have a very Tweedy-centric feel to them, this vast spectrum of recording styles and techniques almost reminds me of one of the more polished Elephant 6 records.

Brewster is backed by a crack team of fantastic folk rockers that do some major heavy lifting at every given opportunity all throughout the album. They convey the correct mood each time so perfectly, that if every song was an instrumental, you’d still fully understand the context and meaning of each one. Personally, whenever the pedal steel is used on this record, like during “Me Leaning Onto The Window,” it automatically pushes the song into being an album highlight for me.

If you are a fan of the work of early Dr. Dog, Wilco and Langhorne Slim, then you’d be sorry if you missed this record.

You can buy Forever Better Kissers on cassette or digital here.

-KH

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