In DEMO 1, Jeff Kleinman (Choir Boy) presents his new solo effort, Begging Dog, as both a diary and a declaration. The single’s surface hums with immediacy: the kind found in basements, rehearsal rooms, and borrowed apartments. Yet beneath that modest veneer lies a mind sharply attuned to form. Kleinman’s discipline is evident. This is a song shaped not by chance but by a rare fidelity to ordinary truth.
“No one loves a begging dog,” he sings, the phrase borrowed from a friend but carried with the gravity of self-recognition. The tone is unhurried, yet unflinching: a recognition that even degradation can be companionable if met with candor. Kleinman’s delivery sits at the threshold between detachment and empathy, giving the lyric its peculiar weight; less a lament than a whispered observation.
The arrangement itself is deceptively simple: rolling bass, serrated guitar lines, and a steady drum machine that ticks like a city’s hidden pulse. There is a rough poetry in its pacing, a kind of working rhythm that suggests motion without haste. Within these constraints, Kleinman discovers quiet invention. Each instrument converses with the others as though recorded in secret.
The characters that drift through Begging Dog are drawn with the affection of an unpretentious witness: a pushy union rep, a mailman with a steady federal job, perhaps even the singer himself, circling a neighborhood where small dramas repeat under indifferent streetlights. Kleinman’s lyrical approach resembles an observational sketchbook: plain, concise, and unsentimental. What might in lesser hands feel pedestrian becomes strangely dignified through his restraint.
Kleinman’s voice carries the ordinary with the gravity of ritual. His phrasing moves like a man speaking plainly about things long understood but seldom admitted aloud. His sensibility owes as much to the plainspoken candour of Bruce Springsteen as it does to the wry domestic poetics of Lou Reed and Sonic Youth, the jangling pastoral charm of The Bats, and the lo-fi eccentricities of Cleaners From Venus. From these touchstones, Begging Dog draws its quiet authority; a lineage of songwriters who found poetry in the everyday, who prized detail over drama. Kleinman channels their spirit through instinct, shaping his portraits of ordinary lives with the same unforced precision, where the smallest turn of phrase or chord change carries the weight of entire streets, jobs, and gestures remembered.
“No matter how good or not good you have it, you’re kind of like looking for something more,” Kleinman says, stopping short of interpretation. “When I’m writing about these things, I don’t try to make them more important than what they are.” That quiet conviction defines Begging Dog: an unadorned piece of work, but alive with presence.
In the end, Begging Dog feels like a conversation overheard through thin apartment walls, a voice steady, unguarded, and truthful. Kleinman transforms simplicity into precision, revealing that sincerity, when unforced, can be the rarest art of all.
The video, directed by Alex Blocher and Jeff Kleinman, is a straightforward performance, as if we’re watching him do karaoke in his living room.
Watch below:
DEMO 1 was mixed and mastered by Matt Whitehurst. Listen to Begging Dog below and pre-order DEMO 1 (out December 12 via Dais Records) here.
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