Staff Pick: Dead Man's Bones

Every couple of years, another gaggle of people discovers Dead Man's Bones, also affectionately, and wrongly, referred to as "Ryan Gosling's band." Dead Man's Bones is a dark folk-rock duo that released exactly one album, also called Dead Man's Bones, of spooky doo-wop tunes about the love lives of ghosts and monsters. Yes, half of the band is Canadian actor Ryan Gosling. This Ryan Gosling

this Ryan Gosling

this one

But half of the band is Zach Shields, and neither takes up more space on this project than the other. This isn't a celebrity vanity project, or like how every actor on Stranger Things is also a very serious musician now; Shields and Gosling are two reasonably grown men who might genuinely believe in ghosts (or at least share a mutual love of scary films and theater camp). It's apparent they just really wanted to make a creepy, romantic, vaudeville-adjacent horror record. And they followed through with monastic dedication to their vision, including the enforcement of self-imposed limitations like playing every single instrument themselves and only allowing three takes to record. If you aren't going to listen for Ryan Gosling, you should definitely do it for the Silverlake Conservatory children's choir, who make an otherwise quite camp album more unsettling.

Hauntings aside, everything this band did in its brief tenure can most accurately be described as joyful and sweet. The question isn't whether it's good; it's whether you're charmed or annoyed by the performance, which included two of the most attractive men I've ever seen rocking up to a retirement home in coordinated V-neck sweaters to sing their single for the elderly. With a guest children's choir. And a dance party at the end. I dare you not to fall in love with them both.

Your tolerance for whimsy will determine how much you love or hate this record, but even 15+ years later, it is well worth your time.