After teasing their comeback last week, Ryan Gosling and Zach Shields’ Dead Man’s Bones finally rose from the crypt on Monday (Oct.26) with the release of the haunted rocker “Lost in the Night.”
The spectral song featuring Project Hail Mary star Gosling’s deadpan vocals and spidery guitar finds him singing, “Shadows growing longer in your dust/ The darkest dawn is on the rise for us/ Chase it all away/ Chase it all away/ Lost in the night/ Lost in the night with you.” The song, which revs up midway through thanks to a spare, driving beat reminiscent of 1970s synth punk pioneers Suicide, also features a chorus of echoey background vocals and was written by Gosling and Shields and co-produced by the duo and longtime collaborator Tim Anderson.
The accompanying black-and-white video stars Hamnet’s Noah Jupe and The Summer I Turned Pretty’s Rain Spencer dancing their way out of a cemetery through the night, laughing, hugging and staring deeply into each other’s eyes as if they were the only two people left on Earth.
Gosling and screenwriter/producer Shields (Krampus) teased their first new music in 17 years last week with a spooky post that was amplified by Gosling’s wife, actress Eva Mendes, who hyped the comeback on her Instagram feed. After the teaser posted, Mendes reposted it on her feed and bragged, “He came through on this promise to me. 🖤.”
Gosling’s 10-track debut solo album, Angel With Tatooed Wings, came out in 2000, and then he and Shields formed Dead Man’s Bones, whose self-titled 2009 debut featured backing vocals from the Silverlake Conservatory’s Children’s Choir. In addition to lead vocals, Gosling played piano, guitar, synthesizer, percussion, cello and bass on that album.
According to a release, after trying to record their sophomore collection in a couple of different Los Angeles studios and not finding the sound they wanted, “the duo took two guitars, two drum machines, and two synthesizers to a farm outside the city and recorded the song in a day. The result is a shadowy but undeniably hopeful homemade anthem that hints at an exciting new direction for the duo.”
Watch the “Lost in the Night” video below.
