Dead Man's Bones (Self Titled Album)
ALBUM TITLE: Dead Man's Bones
ARTIST: Dead Man's Bones
GENRE: Freak Folk / Psychedelic
LISTEN HERE: Bandcamp
While Ryan Gosling is a household name as a Hollywood actor, his musical side project Dead Man's Bones is something of an undiscovered gem in the world of kitsch. With a whole fully released album quietly humming alongside his illustrious acting career, it might be time to wonder what exactly he can't do. Whatever that list of things-Ryan-Gosling-can't-do consists of, it most definitely doesn't include “release an absolute banger of a Halloween album.”
Performing under the pseudonym “Baby Goose”, Gosling joined forces with friend Zach Shields to release a self titled album as the musical duo Dead Man's Bones. The story of how the project came to be is something straight out of a fuzzy nostalgia-tinged afternoon special: bonding over a mutual obsession with the haunted mansion ride at Disneyland and a shared childhood fascination with ghosts. Gosling’s parents believed their childhood home to be haunted and thus moved the family out, while Zach attended years of therapy to handle his morbid fascination with the world of monsters and graveyards. As adults, the two decided to create an homage to their spooktacular pasts, and so Dead Man's Bones was born.
The album features the vocal talents of the Silverlake Conservatory Children's Choir, an eerie counterpoint to Gosling's smooth vocals. Their role as part Greek Chorus, part swirling host of wraiths, is instrumental to the album’s delightfully warm and kitschy tone as graveyard love letter. “Pa Pa Power”, a real standout of the album, uses the choir as part of a classic call-and-response structure that feeds into the track's infectious energy. At other points, the choir descends into ghoulish wails or joyous cacophony, reminiscent of over the top B-movie jump scares and suspense builders straight out of the Halloween TV specials of our childhoods.
The lyrics and instrumentation of the album fully embrace the atmosphere of scary-silly. “Lose Your Soul” is full of frenzied, uplifting folk instrumentation, while “My Body’s a Zombie For You” uses esoteric imagery in a spooky send up of the love ballad, as the choir spells out Z-O-M-B-I-E in a half-sung, half-shouted chant reminiscent of a cheerleading squad from an old highschool teen comedy. In the final track of the album “Flowers Grow Out Of My Grave”, the vocals and instrumentals swell in a rousing finale to the trip to nostalgia-ville.
There’s something to be said about making our demons into something worth celebrating and treasuring, especially in the form of a song. If you've ever gotten lost trick-or-treating, or hurriedly patched up a last minute costume before heading out the door, this is a Halloween album worth a listen.
Listen to Dead Man's Bones below.