Ryan Gosling and Zach Shields' Halloween-minded duo Dead Man's Bones have teased new music for October 27, their first since a 2009 debut album.
Dead Man's Bones are coming back. The spooky indie duo of Ryan Gosling and screenwriter Zach Shields has teased new music for October 27, 17 years after its one and only album, according to Rolling Stone and Pitchfork.
A teaser from Eva Mendes
The comeback started on social media. Pitchfork reports that Gosling's wife, Eva Mendes, posted a message about trying to "summon new music from Dead Man's Bones," then followed it with two spooky visuals. In them, a voice recites a spell to conjure the project for what Pitchfork calls a twilight dance on October 27. Rolling Stone adds that Mendes later wrote that Gosling "came through on his promise to me," and that the video promises new music on that date. A Dead Man's Bones Instagram page has also appeared, per Pitchfork.
Nothing has been announced about what the music is: a single, an EP or a full record. Neither outlet says. We'd treat a full album as unconfirmed until the band says so.
The first record, and why it stuck
The self-titled debut came out in 2009 and was recorded with the Silverlake Conservatory Children's Choir, a California music education group founded by Flea, according to Pitchfork. Shields told Rolling Stone that the songs were first written entirely for the children's choir. Once the pair started working out the parts, they began singing too, and it became a duo with the kids.
Rolling Stone says the band took inspiration from Disney's Haunted Mansion ride and from the Langley Schools Music Project's cult album Innocence and Despair. It quotes the magazine's own 2009 description of the sound as "Arcade Fire, Tom Waits and the cast of Sesame Street performing a Kurt Weill musical." Then the duo went quiet. Rolling Stone puts that down partly to Gosling's growing Hollywood schedule.
The songs kept circulating, though. Cat Power covered "Pa Pa Power" on her Covers album, and the music has turned up in films and TV, Rolling Stone notes, especially after Gosling's best original song nomination for "I'm Just Ken" in Barbie.
Is this a stunt?
Rolling Stone raises the obvious question. Gosling has leaned on viral stunts to promote films lately, and the magazine points out that Star Wars: Starfighter reaches theaters on May 28. It hopes the comeback is a real attempt to recapture the original spooky spirit and not just a way to remind people of that date.
Our view: the timing makes the suspicion fair, but a rollout this small, with a spell, a children's-choir legacy and a Halloween-adjacent date, fits the band's own style. We'll know more on October 27. Until then, all anyone outside the band has is a teaser and a date.
Picture credit: ANTI- Records / Dead Man's Bones (anti.com)
