Dotr

*Dotr* is LP Giobbi’s way of capturing home. The title nods to a running joke in the Oregon-born artist’s family: It’s how she used to sign notes to her parents as a child because she couldn’t spell “daughter.” Her second album is also a product of celebration and grief—a reflection of what she’s gained and lost across life’s changing seasons. In the wake of Giobbi’s post-pandemic ascent, heavy touring left her little time at home before departing once more. Listening to “Brokedown Palace” by the Grateful Dead (her parents’ favorite band) while she boarded planes was a bittersweet ritual as she left behind her source of comfort and anticipated the possibilities ahead. Then, in the weeks leading up to her 2023 debut album *Light Places*, Giobbi lost three prominent women in her life: Patricia Lynn, her mother-in-law; Carolyn Horn, her longtime piano teacher; and Suse Millemann, a family friend who was Giobbi’s first exposure to a professional artist. As Giobbi examines her familial identity on *Dotr*, she honors these women who, despite not sharing blood, had become part of her tribe. A birthday voicemail from Lynn opens the album; elsewhere, Millemann appears through an interlude of her final work, and Horn, in one of her last conversations with Giobbi, emphasizes the importance of making music for oneself. These emotional tributes imbue the remainder of *Dotr* with appreciation for life itself, ups and downs both. It’s how “Feel,” a blushing serenade, can veer into Brittany Howard’s spiraling relationship angst on “Until There’s Nothing Left,” or how Panama emerges from a difficult period of change with gratitude on “Love Come Through,” a crescendo of lively drums and soaring strings. If *Dotr* is Giobbi’s path back home, it’s led her back to the song that reminds her most of it: “Brokedown Palace.” On the album’s closing track, she puts her voice on record for the first time by singing one of its most poignant lyrics: “Mama, mama, many worlds I’ve come/Since I first left home.”