Begging Dog stomps into the room like someone kicking open a stuck basement door. It’s just Jeff Kleinman, shaking off the Choir Boy shimmer for something scrappier, stranger, and stitched together out of late nights, loose wires, and the kind of plain language punk used to trust. DEMO 1 feels like he grabbed the nearest tape recorder, a half-busted synth, and the ghosts of every half-finished thought you try ignoring while riding the bus home. It’s crooked in the right ways. It breathes with that restless urge to make something – anything – before the feeling slips away.
Kleinman channels streaks of jangly Aussie punk, the ragged charm of Cleaners From Venus, and a surprisingly sharp synthpop undercurrent that opens into sprechstimme passages echoing Anne Clark, Sonic Youth, or Lou Reed on one of his disarmingly conversational rambles. But Kleinman’s voice isn’t fishing for nostalgia; it’s more like he’s rummaging through a box of old snapshots and reading whatever’s scribbled on the back.
It’s rare for an artist to pull open the curtain this wide without drifting into confession-as-performance. Kleinman sidesteps that whole circus. He writes like someone taking inventory of their own debris—not to tidy it up, but to understand the shape of the mess. DEMO 1 is full of people you swear you’ve met: the union guy who corners you outside a grocery store, the gambler who keeps borrowing time he won’t pay back, the mailman who somehow knows too much. These characters walk in and out of Kleinman’s songs like neighbors passing through a heatwave sidewalk. Common Place is no exception:
“Common Place was written about my 5 years living in Salt Lake City,” says Kleinman. “One of the most thrilling times of my life full of community and art and an overwhelming feeling of love from everyone around me. It was also an incredibly difficult time in my life, and a kind of turning point in my descent into alcohol addiction. I knew true love, I witnessed a suicide, I joined my favorite band, and I drank far too much. Common Place is a song looking back at all of the beauty and heartbreak from that time, a reflection on everything I have learned and come to cherish from Salt Lake, and a thank you to everyone that I know there. Missing something more than you expected can be a very humbling experience.”.
The video, directed by Alex Blocher and Kleinman himself, throws him into a janky basement where everything feels close enough to touch. No frills, no polish…just the crackle of a performance trying to outrun the walls around it. It suits him. The whole project feels like a dispatch from someone sorting through the clutter of his own life, holding each piece up to the light, and deciding which bits are worth keeping.
Watch the video for “Common Place” below:
Across its concise 26 minutes, DEMO 1 threads rolling basslines, wiry synths, charismatic riffs, and motorik rhythms through lyrics populated by lived-in characters: a pushy union rep, a steady-job mailman, a compulsive gambler, a beloved unhoused neighbor. Ex-lovers drift through the songs like fragmented memories, rendered in blunt, sharp-witted free verse. Kleinman cites Bruce Springsteen for teaching him that plain ink often carries more weight than flowery metaphor.
That ethos shapes the emotional core of the project. Kleinman captures a shared loneliness (especially familiar to life in Los Angeles) with no-frills vulnerability. On the title track he sings, no one loves a begging dog, a line borrowed from a friend that becomes the thesis of the project: the world can make you feel like you’re scrounging for affection and security, yet there’s unexpected beauty in solitude and the low hum of everyday life.
Though much of DEMO 1 was made alone, Begging Dog’s songs expand live into a seven-piece band. “No matter how good or not good you have it, you’re kind of like looking for something more,” Kleinman says, resisting any urge to assign grand meaning. “When I’m writing about these things, I don’t try to make them more important than what they are.” That restraint gives DEMO 1 its candor, grit, and quietly potent hooks.
Mixed and mastered by Matt Whitehurst, DEMO 1 is streaming now and arrives on vinyl via Dais Records on December 12. Listen to Common Place below and order the album here.
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