An Oscar-nominated Hollywood heartthrob and his best friend round up a bunch of instruments-- some of which they don't know how to play-- and a massive children's choir and make a concept album about the supernatural. Seems like a recipe for disaster, right? Guess again.

Meet Dead Man's Bones, a collaboration between actors Ryan Gosling (Half Nelson, The Believer, The Notebook) and Zach Shields. The duo plan to release their debut album, Never Let a Lack of Talent Get You Down, on their own label, Werewolf Heart, this summer. You might have seen their MySpace page, or a video for their song "In the Room Where You Sleep" floating around the web recently. In the clip, Gosling and Shields lead a bunch of kids, all dressed in Halloween costumes, through a spare acoustic lament. It's creepy and catchy. It sounds like a middle school assembly gone goth. And it's pretty damn good.

As far as celebrity music projects go, the quality level on this one is a lot closer to She & Him than, say, Joaquin Phoenix's rap career. While listening to tracks from the Dead Man's Bones album at the office, I've been asked by co-workers if I'm listening to Bryan Ferry or something by the Arcade Fire. No lie.

Earlier this week, Gosling and Shields gave Pitchfork their first-ever interview about Dead Man's Bones. The pair were nervous and excited to talk about the band, and they seem genuinely committed to the project, which is a labor-intensive D.I.Y. undertaking. As Gosling put it, "We've worked on it solid for two years. I made a couple movies because I had to, but this is all we do."

The pair bonded over a shared obsession with scary stuff like ghosts, monsters, and zombies, and set out to create a spooky musical theater production, "a Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire kind of show," as Gosling described it. Somewhere along the way, the "theater production" aspect of it fell to the wayside, but the songs remained.

Inspired by musical classroom experiments the Langley Schools Music Project and Nancy Dupree's Ghetto Reality, the two decided to involve children in Dead Man's Bones from the very beginning. "We'd rather see a high school play as opposed to a Broadway show any day," Gosling explained. "Not that Broadway shows aren't great, but there's just something about a high school play...you're not distracted by the achievements, you get to watch the process, the will to make something."

To help Dead Man's Bones acheive that pre-fridge feeling, the pair recruited a choir from the Silverlake Conservatory of Music, the Los Angeles music education facility co-founded by Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The choir members' ages ranged from five to 17. Every Sunday afternoon for several months, Gosling and Shields would rehearse and record with the kids. The "In the Room Where You Sleep" video was filmed on their final day together, during a wrap party that also included a bouncy castle, a taco truck, and a piñata.


Integral to the creation of Dead Man's Bones was the pair's motivation to keep things as raw and real as possible, stripped down to reveal even the limitations of their musicianship. When it came time to record the album, Gosling and Shields created a set of White Stripes-esque rules to follow so as to not taint the purity of the process. Rules like no click tracks or electric guitars, no more than three takes, and playing all of the instruments themselves (along with producer Tim Anderson of Ima Robot). Gosling played cello and piano for the first time, while Shields took up the drums. Their desire to work under these conditions stemmed from bad music industry experiences in the past.

Gosling's singing also suffered under the weight of conventional studio expectations. On the Dead Man's Bones album, Shields' indie-everyman voice complements Gosling's more mannered tone, which exhibits a bit of Roy Orbison (or, some might say, Bryan Ferry) tremolo. However, encouraging Gosling to display his natural talent wasn't all that easy. Shields explained, "I'd hear him do karaoke, or when he thinks nobody's listening, like he's in the other room singing, with his natural voice, when he's singing and nobody's listening, it has this old quality, like this 50s kind of croonery feel. Every time I would hear him singing, without trying to sound like anything, that's how he sings. So we were trying to record one session, and they were trying to make us both sound so modern, which he doesn't. I was like, 'You know, you should just sing in your natural voice,' and they kind of made fun of us. They were like, 'Oh that's goofy, that's silly.'"

To combat those pressures, the duo went for a lo-fi aesthetic. Gosling said, "There was always some kind of function on the computer, a filter that would assimilate the thing that you wanted, and we didn't understand why you couldn't just record the thing that you wanted. Like, why you had to do the computerized version of it, why can't you just record it? It's more fun that way anyway, because you have to design a way to get that sound. For instance, if you want something to sound like it was on a PA system after a wedding and there's a few people dancing, why not just create that situation and record that?"

The album is currently in the final mixing stage, and the pair is currently discussing distribution options to have it come out in June. Gosling and Shields are in the process of making videos for all of the songs, working with the likes of sculptor Arthur Ganson and the creators of the Adult Swim show "Robot Chicken".

The next step for the band is taking the show on the road. Dead Man's Bones' first gig is slated to be at a showcase for their label, Werewolf Heart, on March 21 at SXSW. The plan is to work with a different local children's choir in each city they visit-- a labor-intensive, but ultimately rewarding, idea. "I think it'll keep it interesting for us, because every time we'll get to work with new kids and get new ideas and hopefully tailor each performance to that experience," Gosling said. "And, you know, we can't play bars with kids, so we'll have to put together a night-time version of our act, which we're working on. I think we're excited about that, we're excited about how many different ways we can dress it up, with different kinds of choirs and artists, and it should be interesting."

The more of Gosling's work I find out about (film, etc.), the more he intrigues me.

Why hasn't the GARCHIPELAGO come in here to tell us what paedo-mongers you are, with no ear for good music & no life?

While this is obviously horrid, sound unheard and sight unseen, I am enjoying Mick's reign as resident shitter on of everything. That dude's awesome.

Sure is gimmicky, but I do like that song a bit