Foxygen – Bandwidth

First Listen: Diane Coffee, ‘Everybody’s A Good Dog’

Doug Mosurock — Wed, 26 Aug 2015 23:03:00 +0000

A good story could be made of the Foxygen family tree, as its roots wound from stage and screen on the showbiz coasts to the college town of Bloomington, Ind. Bloomington made sense logistically, as Foxygen founders Sam France and Jonathan Rado’s record label is situated there, but it also became the temporary home for that group’s protege, Dub Thompson, during the recording of its own debut album. Now, it’s providing a home base for Diane Coffee (a.k.a. Shaun Fleming, former Disney voice talent and touring drummer for Foxygen) as the place where he came to craft his second album, Everybody’s A Good Dog.

Aspiring to a ’70s ideal that rolls up sugarcoated bubblegum glam, soul balladry, Francophone pop and echoes of the Brill Building, Fleming finds the right notes of sincerity under all that artifice. “Spring Breathes” inhales the dark perfume of Pet Sounds and exhales something akin to truthful camp, as the track bounces between his breaking falsetto and acoustic strum, and between choral bursts of fuzz guitar and chunky bass. “Soon To Be, Won’t To Be” continues those clever juxtapositions, coming across like a millennial Saint Etienne with its mutable, Leslie-speaker vocal vibrato and rainy-day stabs of funk organ. The rhythm section anchors the album from stem to stern, its low end acting as a buffer against studio-tested fills, brassy bravado and canny intros that make these 11 songs feel all the more familiar.

At the center of all this is Fleming, who mines a double-edged conceit: tailoring the intensely borrowed elements of Everybody’s A Good Dog to fit his own aims, and bringing his stage and screen training along to bolster them. He’s mugging as hard as he can, while also adding dimension and character to the collection. His cooing high notes are matched by a predilection for blue-eyed soul, with a range that accommodates jumps into the clouds and throaty, from-the-gut proclamations. “Duet,” a fittingly named collaboration with vocalist Felicia Douglass, recalls the weathered 45 sides that built up R&B radio in the early ’70s; the song jams a bedroom-funk wah-wah break into a confident take-me-back ballad, underlining the influences while also having fun with them. Fleming will never let you forget where his music comes from, but on Everybody’s A Good Dog, he works hard to keep his own identity in there, as well.

KEXP Presents: Foxygen

Jim Beckmann — Mon, 18 Aug 2014 13:46:38 +0000

It had been almost a year to the day since Sam France of Foxygen fell off a stage, canceling the band’s 2013 tour just as it was getting started. But now he and songwriting partner Jonathan Rado are back with a glittery, glammy vengeance. On the day of their live session at KEXP, the two announced the follow-up to their epic We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic with the even-more-epic 24-song, four-suite double LP …And Star Power.

We hadn’t yet heard a bit of the new album, but when France and Rado brought the full nine-member group into our tiny studio, we couldn’t help but swoon over their sultry astral melodies. They perform “How Can You Really” here.

Set List

“How Can You Really”

Watch Foxygen’s entire KEXP session on KEXP’s YouTube channel.

Foxygen On World Cafe

WXPN-FM Staff — Mon, 27 Jan 2014 15:17:00 +0000

In a segment from January of last year — around the time they released their successful debut, We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic — Foxygen’s Jonathan Rado and Sam France turn up on World Cafe to perform and discuss songs from their album together.

More recently, Foxygen has dropped hints about a forthcoming double album, as well as the possibility of five upcoming releases that would each center on a different era from the past. But in the meantime, now is as good a time as any to revisit the songs that made the band famous in the first place.