rock

Dogstar

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Nineties alt-rock trio with Keanu Reeves on bass, reactivated after a long dormancy — unfussy guitar songs played without a hint of novelty.

Dogstar formed in Los Angeles in 1991, when Robert Mailhouse and Keanu Reeves met by chance at a supermarket, Reeves spotting Mailhouse's hockey jersey and asking if he needed a goalie. The pair started jamming, cycled through a couple of blunt working titles, and settled on Dogstar, a name borrowed from Henry Miller's novel Sexus. Bret Domrose joined as guitarist and vocalist in 1994, taking over lead vocals in 1995 from original singer Gregg Miller.

The band toured and recorded steadily through the 1990s, opening for David Bowie at the Hollywood Palladium in 1995 and touring Australia and New Zealand with Bon Jovi the same year. They released an EP, Quattro Formaggi, in 1996, followed by a debut album issued only in Japan, and a second record, Happy Ending, in 1999.

Their music is straightforward guitar rock in a post-grunge vein, built on melodic songwriting rather than studio polish or effects. Domrose's voice and rhythm-guitar lines carry most tracks, with Reeves's bass and Mailhouse's drums keeping the arrangements simple and direct.

The band's final show of that era took place in Japan in October 2002, after which they broke up. The three members kept meeting for informal jam sessions at Mailhouse's home in Silver Lake over the next two decades, began writing together again in 2020, and announced a reunion in 2022, followed by a new album in 2023. Since returning, Dogstar have mostly played small and mid-sized rooms, keeping the focus on the songs rather than on Reeves's film career.

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