The band—Gosling, best friend Ryan Shields, and a children’s choir—started when Shields and Gosling wanted to start a theatre show. The theatre idea dissipated, but the music remained, and that’s all I needed to become absolutely obsessed.
Their debut album, Never Let a Lack of Talent Get You Down, on their own label, Werewolf Heart, is coming out this summer. A brilliant and simple video of a performance of “In the Room Where You Sleep” is smeared across YouTube and MySpace, and another song, “Dead Man’s Bones,” can be found IMEEM Music.
Gosling and Shields went at the project not trying to create a perfect package deal. Their MySpace page claims their inspiration to be from the Haunted Mansion at Disney World, which is visible in their video and lyrics.
Except their obsession with death isn’t creepy, it’s down-right perfect. It’s not even of the indie-aesthetic that far too many have become engulfed in after seeing Juno; but that’s a social dialogue I won’t be getting into. However, the sound is frozen in time with Gosling’s dreary and uncompromising vocals. Absolute grit.
In fact, Gosling and Shields held to a set of rules when recording: no click tracks or electric guitars, no more than three takes, and playing all of the instruments themselves. Gosling played cello and piano for the first time; Shields took up the drums. The result is a stripped, accessible indie unit that I just can’t shake.
They hope to go on tour but instead of carting around the kiddies in a macabre Partridge Family bus, Gosling plans to work with different youth choirs in the cities that they tour. When it comes time to make a few bar gigs, the plan is to involve artist friends. Who knows, maybe Joaquin Phoenix will spit on a few tracks?
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