Guster recently spent time in the studio on its first album for AWARE/Columbia. The quartet has spent most of 2008 off the road working on material for the project, which will likely hit stores in 2009.

Weve recorded 8 basic tracks now, drummer Brian Rosenworcel wrote in his bands online studio journal. It took us 3 days to do it. Thats 2 and 2/3rds songs per day. Most bands that David Kahne works with knock out 4 in a day, but wed never done more than one a day before (we started in a dorm room! were just cavemen!), so for us this represents a real accomplishment. Should there be pride in recording songs quickly? If youre Guster, and you can spin your heels like nobodys business in the studio, absolutely. We actually practiced the songs this time. Usually well get into the studio and say things like it feels like the click track is speeding up in the chorus because were used to slowing down in the chorus (my bad). This time we got that out of our system in rehearsal, where the rent is cheap. I dont think we did more than 4 takes on any song, and we usually got what we needed from the first couple of takes. There will be fiddling and tweaking, as we are wont to do in the studio, but there will be no take the bridge from take 18 and the second verse from take 31, but use the fill into the chorus from take 4 this time around.
Shortly before the 2008 General Election, Guster tried a few of its new songs out at a Barack Obama benefit held at Brooklyn, NYs Music Hall of Williamsburg. The group will continue work on its sixth studio album into 2009.