Jacob Klein, the man behind the glorious moniker I Give My Friends Flowers, might have honed his musical skills through formal training and a career in the music industry, but there is a feeling that moves gracefully through this album that speaks of something else, something slightly intangible, something not learned but inherent. It is when you read his backstory, one of growing up with the twin influences of his father’s audio shop and his mother’s garden, that the penny drops – it is a distant echo of who he is.
Having worked on other people’s music for so long, he now turns to his own thoughts, feelings, and experiences. It is not only those formative years spent listening and observing that ooze through the music, but the feelings of grief and loss and love and longing that have, sadly, been prevalent in his life that finally find a home on Dogstar1.
The beautiful ‘Every Moment Something Beautiful Dies’ sets the tone, its lush pop-gaze sound perfect as a vehicle for musing on the fragility of life, a reminder that nothing can be taken for granted, that tomorrow can’t be second-guessed. It is reflective rather than melancholic, a subtle call to live in the moment.
‘cloud-hidden, chamomile’ drifts rather than drives, forged as much from arrays of vocals as from beat and chiming piano; ‘ASHES’ wanders into a very cutting-edge, rap-meets-chilled-dance place, glitchy, atmospheric and signalling that Dogstar1 is not an album that is going to be musically predictable and ‘When I See The Moon’ has a crushing, claustrophobic beauty. ‘better days’ signs the album off with a floating sonic optimism.
As with all great albums, it is the message as much as the music that is important here, even if that message is personal and subtle and found as much between the lines as in the actual words- a mood or feeling to be absorbed by some emotional osmosis rather than laid out in an obvious fashion.
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