Just when you thought Halloween couldn’t get any more interesting, Ryan Gosling has apparently decided that 17 years is quite long enough to leave a perfectly good skeleton buried.
Dead Man’s Bones, the wonderfully strange musical collaboration between Gosling and screenwriter Zach Shields, has returned with “Lost in the Night,” its first new song since the duo’s self-titled debut album arrived in 2009.
For anyone unfamiliar with Dead Man’s Bones, imagine wandering into an old haunted house and discovering that the ghosts have formed an indie rock band. Their original album mixed gothic folk, vintage rock and roll, doo-wop, and the haunting voices of the Silverlake Conservatory Children’s Choir. It was atmospheric, theatrical, occasionally unsettling, and unlike much of anything else on the radio.
The new single takes a somewhat different approach. Recorded in a single day at a farm outside Los Angeles, “Lost in the Night” trades some of the original album’s ghostly choir atmosphere for drum machines, synthesizers, echoing vocals, and a darker electronic sound. There’s also an accompanying black-and-white music video starring Noah Jupe and Rain Spencer.
And naturally, they’ve chosen to return just before Halloween. I can’t decide whether that’s brilliant timing or whether somebody accidentally opened the wrong crypt.
The song is available now through ANTI- Records, although there’s no confirmation yet of another full-length album. For now, we’ll simply have to enjoy this unexpected resurrection and hope Gosling and Shields don’t disappear for another 17 years.
Maddie’s Musings: I’m always delighted when musicians make something unusual simply because they love it. Dead Man’s Bones was never your typical Hollywood vanity project, and the world could use a little more of that strange, creative spirit. Besides, if you’re going to bring a band back from the dead, October is obviously the proper month to do it.
Listen to “Lost in the Night” and explore Dead Man’s Bones: https://www.anti.com/artists/dead-mans-bones/
