Diane Coffee
Everybody's a Good Dog
Release Date: Sep 4, 2015
Genre(s): Pop/Rock
Record label: Western Vinyl Records
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Album Review: Everybody's a Good Dog by Diane Coffee
Very Good, Based on 4 Critics
Based on rating 8/10
After recording the first Diane Coffee record by himself, sometimes on his phone, in a small N.Y.C. apartment, Shaun Fleming recorded the second Diane Coffee album, Everybody's a Good Dog, in a relatively lush studio in his new hometown of Bloomington, Indiana. Working with a large group of collaborators, including his Foxygen bandmates, and a larger palette of instruments that includes horns and strings, Fleming takes the intimate, loosely warped pop of My Friend Fish and blows it up into an expansive rainbow that includes elements of Motown, dub reggae, classic '60s bubblepop, '70s glam rock, and psychedelic R&B; jamming them together into a glittering ball of sound.
Based on rating 8/10
Head here to submit your own review of this album. The idea of second albums being such a huge deal for an artist's career lies solely with how well their debut was received. If the second album is more or less on the same musical wavelength as the first one, it can either be called "coherent" or "boring"; when the sophomore is considerably different from the debut, it can either show an artist's "ability for musical diversity" or their "inability to focus in one single musical direction".
Based on rating 5.5/10
Shaun Fleming's second solo album under his Diane Coffee guise, Everybody's a Good Dog, has as many personas as it has tracks. Fleming doesn't worry himself about timeframes or styles—or cohesion, for that matter. Whatever he's into turns up on Everybody's a Good Dog. The airy, breathy opener, "Spring Breathes," is not at all an indication of the album's direction, as the very next track, "Mayflower," is a Rolling Stones-style number but way noisier and with layers upon layers of fantastic horns.
Based on rating C
Diane Coffee might be a broken kaleidoscope pointed squarely at the past, but at least its colors don’t run. The psychedelic project helmed by Foxygen drummer Shaun Fleming soaks up as many rays from the ‘60s and ‘70s as it possibly can, then photosynthesizes them into the kind of organism you’d expect from a twenty-whatever-year-old who’s obsessed with T-Rex and spent a few years in New York City for kicks. Fleming’s second album as Diane Coffee, Everybody’s a Good Dog, kicks up the production values a touch from his 2013 debut Mr.
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