Much like the feeling of lo-fi and folk genres grant to their audiences, I GIVE MY FRIENDS FLOWERS is the embodiment of joining beautiful things: friends, like the flowers they deserve — like the moment of expressing your love and appreciation for your loved ones.
A collective work that feels like a warm, knowing hug through a devastating storm. It’s an immaculately tender tension amidst a musical payoff of chords intermingling with complementary melodies. Born of the intense devastation of Hurricane Helene, this Asheville
His latest album, DOGSTAR 1, lands like a gentle answer from a collective effervescent prayer. It’s the moment you lose yourself and become witness to who you really are all the same time. It’s an album that emanates an understanding for the words you didn’t have, for the faces and moments in your life that you do.
Artist Jacob Klein, aka I GIVE MY FRIENDS FLOWERS, started this project as an actionable response to a gripping reality: tomorrow isn’t promised.
I GIVE MY FRIENDS FLOWERS is for late nights, car rides, and open windows.
I GIVE MY FRIENDS FLOWERS is an invitation, an offering.
Made with friends, for friends.
For anyone you love.
All these former tomorrows later, Jacob has lived and worked in Nashville, Pittsburgh, New York, and Asheville. Tucked into every nuanced moment over the last decade as a producer and musician, the songs on DOGSTAR 1 were created as a result of living through some of the most formative years of his life.
One of those formative moments was Hurricane Helene.
Hurricane Helene, the “1,000-year flood” that tore through Asheville and the surrounding region in the fall of 2024. The hurricane destroyed countless homes, took over 250 lives, decimated businesses and ecosystems, and ultimately upended communities that Jacob had only recently begun to call home. The aftermath led to Jacob connecting with his community to engage in mutual aid work, checking in on neighbors and friends. From there, he realized he had been confronting something he hadn’t expected: how long his interior detriments had been haunting and harming him.
That devastation had roots that went back further than the hurricane. From caretaking for his grandfather in a pandemic and losing countless friends to the drug epidemic in Pennsylvania along the way, each experience left him scarred. Not long after, he moved to Asheville for a fresh start just to learn shortly after that his young dog had a terminal illness. He left the job he’d just landed to spend her final months by her side. When she passed, the relationship Jacob’s life was built around the better part of ten years didn’t survive, either.
Rising like a phoenix from the ashes of everything that’d burned down in his life leading up to this point, his brother and close friend released a cathartic “breath outward” with an EP. Jacob describes it as a “way of processing loss together before any of [them] fully had the language for it.” i give my friends flowers was born in 2023 with a small, independently released EP, “Now, Forever.” Although his brother made the decision to move away, Jacob pushed himself to find a more solitary creative path forward, resulting in a new home studio in West Asheville.
Named for Sirius, the Dog Star, DOGSTAR 1 is a record about what it means to lose people to death, distance, and change, and what it means to keep choosing love anyway.
His songs span the full range of that same reckoning of going the way of love in the end. His interpolation of an Allen Ginsberg poem, a friend’s wedding vows sampled at the beach, a relationship dissolving over mellotron strings, a dog called by the wrong name
Jacob tracked and produced the record between Pittsburgh, Asheville, and the New River Gorge, working with Julian Klein, Harrison Wargo, Gabriel Lotfy-Nassar, Kyle Baumbach, Julius Tunstall, Evan Isaac Black, and Mike Johnson. The record was mastered by Chris Gehringer at Sterling Sound, a final polishing touch to seal the deal on such a fantastic record. A nostalgic touch come full circle, he was able to finish parts of it in the room where he’d first fallen in love with music, in his parents’ house near Pittsburgh.
It wasn’t just the other talented musicians he knew in his life that contributed to the album; he leaned on the writers, filmmakers, and artists who’d carried him through hard times before. Jacob leaned on the creations and inspirations of Haruki Murakami, David Lynch, Alejandro Jodorowsky, David Hockney, and Pink Floyd. All are reminders that songs and stories are what make us feel seen, even courageous enough to push us forward when we need it most.
DOGSTAR 1 arrived today, August 21, led by the single (caution, it will make you choke up), “VOICES,” with an upcoming companion record, DOGSTAR 2, soon to follow. Together they form the first real chapter of a much longer story of choosing love, dedication, and creation, even when the ground continues shifting beneath you.
With the entire album a kaleidoscope of experiential atmospheres over a non-linear storytelling method, it’s hard to pinpoint which tracks on DOGSTAR 1 stand out more than the next. They’re all intricately tied together and unique to Jacob Klein’s work as I GIVE MY FRIENDS FLOWERS. One of the best movements and moments in music you’ll discover all year.
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Written by Samson Winsor
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The post Ethereal and bittersweet levity, I GIVE MY FRIENDS FLOWERS releases album, “DOGSTAR 1” appeared first on ROCK THE PIGEON.
