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.