Matt Kerstein and his crack squad of players – guitarist Jim Turek, bassist Devon Bryant and drummer Sam Koentopp – sink themselves into a general mood that feels like sad chandeliers, a cold frost and men sipping glasses of brandy or whiskey in glasses that are almost always empty and in rooms that are dimmed and staring back with an anxious tension. The songs on Amateur Lovers and their new brothers are a combination of these scenes and the anticlimactic (or most interesting) narratives that have shown the characters as the flawed, yet resiliently trying men that everyone starts out as and winds up as through no lack of effort. These are thoughts that build into a kettle of steam that announce their presence over the course of time, seeping out slowly without the whistle. These are thoughts that one catches himself thinking and knows not where they came from or how they found him, just that they’re right or they’re more right than wrong. Kerstein has one of the most engaging voices and lyrical minds anywhere and Brighton, MA has already made an album that should be recognized, not necessarily alongside other albums that are marveled over, but sharing quarters with prized literature, the pleasure and pain of solitude and mankind’s corrupt beauty. - daytrotter