Diane Coffee

Everybody’s A Good Dog is the first true realization of Shaun Fleming’s Little Shop of Horrors -meets-Aladdin Sane vision, recorded in a proper studio with an assortment of guest artists, horn section, and string ensemble (all firsts for Fleming). The resulting 11 tracks are a sky-scraping sound kaleidoscope, touched with euphoric instrumentation and dark lyricism. ?

Just as Diane Coffee’s debut LP, 2013’s ‘My Friend Fish,’ was inspired by Fleming’s move from sunny California to New York City, Everybody’s A Good Dog took shape after this former Disney child actor and current drummer for Foxygen uprooted again from NYC to the much smaller town of Bloomington, IN – “spontaneous moves have always helped to inspire my writing” he explains. This downsizing provided Fleming with a blank slate to create – “I missed the quiet. I missed having a fire. I missed the color green.”

The songs on Everybody’s A Good Dog capture this sense of clarity, channeling the New York Dolls or T-Rex at their strutting-est and Meatloaf at his most theatrical, with shades of Motown-worthy soul. The gentle psychedellia on opener “Spring Breathes” gives way to a pounding prog breakdown, “Mayflower” leads with a monster funk-fueled horn riff, while on “Tams Up” Fleming fronts his own one-man doo-wop group.