Dead Man's Bones Are Set to Jingle Jangle
Actor Ryan Gosling and Cohort Zach Shields Unveil A Dark Debut Album
Definitely not in the traditional sense, but with the inclusion of The Silverlake Conservatory of Music Children's Choir (also known as the kids on the cover in Halloween costumes), this initial offering, courtesy of Werewolf Heart Records, is a uniquely offbeat pill to swallow.
The Horror of Youth
On first listen, the album comes off as the soundtrack to a kids show that has lost it's mind. It's as if a Nick Jr. exec had a nervous breakdown, spent a few nights sleeping it off in a French Quarter alleyway, and awoke with the vision of a barbershop quartet of ill repute teaching children not the ABC's or their 123's, but how to use golden age horror imagery to convey feelings of love, hopelessness and basically everything else in between.
Add in Ryan Gosling (The Notebook, Lars and the Real Girl), the band's multi-instrumentalist and orator of the bizarre, who's vocals often sound like they were recorded through the flooded plumbing of a condemned house, and you have an album that has the potential to bring much wrong upon the world. It may come as a surprise, then, that somehow it manages to be one of the most listenable and original albums so far this year.
Some Standout Cuts...
In an album who's maudlin mood is regularly maintained, the tracks that stand out the most are it's strangely functional upbeat jams. In The Room Where You Sleep won't be making the dance floor rounds anytime soon, but somebody is going to be having a private shimmy in their room to the jittery synth and 'stalker leading a happy hand-clap congregation' vibe.
My Body's a Zombie For You is a different story entirely. Children's choirs have an impractical creepiness to them in a well lit auditorium. When their ghostly kinder-voices float out of the speakers offering up their bodies as your own personal living dead, creepy ceases to be a strong enough word.
Pa Pa Power brings some levity back to the beats, even if those children are still refraining "We won't destroy you, no, we will not destroy you." Kids these days. You take them to choir practice and look at what happens.
Who Couldn't Come to Dig These Bones?
On the back of the album jacket, emblazoned over the children by candle light, is the mantra "NEVER LET A LACK OF TALENT GET YOU DOWN!" Courageously self deprecating, this lack of musical chops could be argued, but the feel and unconventional honesty of the proceedings can not. Ryan Gosling, Zach Shields, and their intimidating collect of young 'uns have composed what appears to be a deeply personal, yet wholly entertaining debut.
Here's to hoping the ever present 'actor in a band' stigma doesn't drive them away before they give us a few more bones to play with.
Dead Man's Bones Track Listing:
1. Intro
2. Dead Hearts
3. In The Room Where You Sleep
4. Buried in Water
5. My Body's a Zombie for You
6. Pa Pa Power
7. Young & Tragic
8. Paper Ships
9. Lose Your Soul
10. Werewolf Heart
11. Dead Man's Bones
12. Flowers Grow Out of My Grave
FURTHER INDIE REVIEWS
Dead Mans Bones & The Silverlake Conservatory Kids
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