Ryan Gosling is reviving one of his long-dormant side gigs just in time for Halloween. The Project Hail Mary star announced on Thursday (Oct. 22) that after nearly 20 years of dormancy, new music is on the way from his rock duo side project, Dead Man’s Bones.
In an Instagram video, the duo featuring Gosling and screenwriter/producer Zach Shields (Krampus, Godzilla Vs. Kong), teased their first new music in 17 years, due out on Oct. 27. In keeping with the spooky vibe of their eponymous 2009 debut LP, the brief teaser video has a distinctly Halloween-appropriate air.
It features a man’s head floating in a sinister spiral as he warns, “Where winds are black as midnight breath. Where hands can’t find the light to loose, the chains that keep me far from you,” he says ominously. “So, dead man’s bones must wait to rise, from the house where shadows cry. All of this must change,” he adds, with a young girl’s voice interrupting to shout “Oct. 27!”
“When our ghosts must leave our world for this, to dance with us at twilight time, and bring your hand to lie in mine,” he continues. The post is credited to the band as well as Gosling’s wife, actress Eva Mendes, who has been quietly hyping the comeback on her own feed, including earlier this week when she posted old horror movie footage cued to Dead Man’s Bones’ haunted rock tune “In the Room Where You Sleep.”
Mendes followed that up with a video in which she walks slowly through a grove of trees, cued to Gosling’s spectral voice singing “down, under the ground/ There’s a town there/ I’ve been down there” in a ghostly voice with the caption, “Trying to summon new music from DEAD MAN’S BONES. I can feel it in the air …”
After the teaser trailer dropped, Mendes reposted it on her feed and gushed, “He came through on this promise to me. 🖤.”
Former All New Mickey Mouse Club star Gosling has frequently leaned into his singing chops in his films, including Lars and the Real Girl, Blue Valentine, La La Land, Song to Song, and, most memorably, in Barbie, where his pop anthem “I’m Just Ken” earned an Oscar nomination.
Gosling dropped his 10-track debut solo album, Angel With Tatooed Wings, in 2000 and then teamed up with Shields to form Dead Man’s Bones, whose self-titled debut was recorded with the Silverlake Conservatory’s Children’s Choir. In addition to singing lead vocals on chilling rock tracks such as “Buried in Water,” Gosling plays piano, guitar, synthesizer, percussion, cello and bass on songs including the swaying, jazzy “My Body’s a Zombie For You” and the phantasmal “Werewolf Heart.”
At press time, no additional information was available about the title of the upcoming project from Dead Man’s Bones or which label will be releasing it, though ANTI- Records, which issued the duo’s debut, also posted the Oct. 27 teaser.
