Dogstar
Happy Ending

How many times have you listened to a Foo Fighters album and, instead of enjoying the songs in their entirety, felt the urge to skip straight to the choruses? I, especially with a couple of their works, suffered through the fatigue of certain formulaic and lackluster riff arrangements, only to find relief in the more open and radio-friendly choruses... How many times has the same happened to you? With Dogstar, know this, oh lovers of post-grunge because grunge is dead, this won't occur. Also because, mind you, Dogstar only has two albums.

Active on the scene during a golden era for American rock, but inevitably underestimated due to the presence in the lineup of Keanu Reeves on bass and Rob Mailhouse (an American soap actor) on drums, the band led by the highly skilled composer, guitarist, and vocalist Bret Domrose on this album offered grunge-postgrunge (or grunge pop, in the style of the F.F.) and alternative rock, following intuitions already reached by Dave Grohl. Dogstar presents tracks that, although within the same framework (apart from the cover "Superman" by the Carpenters), always remain varied, highly musical in the verses, and as original as they are captivating in their riffs and rhythms.

Undoubtedly, the 40 overly perfect guitars of the Foos are missing in the choruses (Dogstar prefers/settles for something more handcrafted), as here inevitably we’re talking about grunge, and the guitars, whether it’s one or forty, along with the vocals, must scratch precisely at minute X and second Y of each song, but if that’s no problem for you, if you're still capable of appreciating such styles and sounds, Dogstar might still be for you. And then there must have been someone who got a Foo Fighters album after "There Is Nothing Left To Lose," right? And to this someone, "Happy Ending" is recommended...

What makes "Happy Ending" a great postgrunge-popgrunge album is that distance between one chorus and the next... That distance can be a monotonous wall of riffs and words hardly sung in time, but it can also correspond, as with the tracks on "Happy Ending," to a beautiful bridge you might even want to linger on a bit.

"Happy Ending" was released in 2000, a full four years after their debut. It's possible this was an attempt to cash in a little more on the renewed youthful-adolescent interest in Keanu Reeves, then fresh from his famous role as Neo in the first episode of the "The Matrix" saga: when you hear about it, all the grime of the music business inevitably surfaces, but anyone who listens to Dogstar would soon realize that Bret Domrose deserved a completely different fate, rather than making music alone, testing and recording it solely in the spare time of the two actors, as well as releasing it in the wake of the cinematic successes of "his" multi-ethnic bassist... Otherwise, it wouldn't explain such a late debut for a band (which happened in 1996) that, like it or not, had formed at the beginning of the nineties, nor would it seem logical to try again four years later.

Dogstar was thus a project born with clipped wings. And for a project born ill-starred, every end is a "Happy Ending"... The one of this album was the best possible.