A musical outlet for quirky leading man
Ryan Gosling
and his slightly more civilian BFF
Zach Shields
,
Dead Man’s Bones
was destined from the beginning to draw comparisons to actors-turned-singers
Scarlett Johansson
and
Zooey Deschanel
. Thankfully, the likenesses end at SAG membership. Listening to
Dead Man’s Bones,
it’s easy to forget this is the same guy from
The Notebook
who cried, “It wasn’t over; it still isn’t over!” before lunging into a full-on tongue swap with co-star-cum-girlfriend-cum-ex-girlfriend Rachel McAdams. In fact, this album is far more likely to inspire wistful cemetery visits than raunchy celebrity-themed fantasies.
Part of its eeriness comes from the duo’s musical amateurism. This is not a clean-sounding record; it’s littered with old-house sounds and filled with delightfully sloppy reverb. The tempos are fluid (apparently the band eschewed the use of a metronome) and the playing is methodically incorrect (Gosling and Shields elected to play all instruments themselves, even those on which they had no training;
PJ Harvey
much?). But the sounds that spring from these musical experiments form a unique textural canvas over which the songs (which, with names like “Werewolf Head” and “My Body’s a Zombie for You,” might otherwise come across as cartoon-like) self-assemble into airy apparitions.
Despite the album’s theme of long-gone love from beyond the grave,
Dead Man’s Bones
is an obvious product (or poltergeist, if you prefer) of this decade. It’s got the spaciousness and spookiness of
Grizzly Bear
’s
Yellow House
, the complex instrumentation of early
Arcade Fire
, and a prominently featured children’s choir, à la this month’s
Where The Wild Things Are
soundtrack. Considering how weird and fun large groups of singing children sound, it’s easy to imagine how the band translates album tracks into their complicated and theatrical live performances (for which the music was originally written). But even without a stage counterpart,
Dead Man’s Bones
evokes all the right images of a haunted October, and with such sensitivity and sincerity, it’s rarely kitschy and never inappropriate.
Review by
Sarah Dupuis
Another actor; another actor-turned-musician. It's easy to scoff, especially in light of Scarlett Johnasson’s contrived mangling of the Tom Waits songbook. At the very least, though, one can rest assured that Dead Man’s Bones' heart is in the right place. The band/project formed by the thinking-person’s matinee idol Ryan Gosling and Zach Shields, is equal parts macabre junk-shop theater, avant campfire tales, and heartfelt noisemaking. The presence of the Silver Lake Conservatory Children’s Choir only adds to the project's aura of eerie playfulness. Anti- is set to release the album, however it’s official due date remains unclear.
Abstract by
Nate Knaebel