Dispatches for Luna & Max (#06)

  • If ever there was a band that should have been an utter disaster, Dead Man’s Bones would have been the one to bet on. A celebrity’s (Gosling) side project, a halloween themed album, and a children’s choir? That sounds terrible. And yet, a decade later, it’s still one of my most listened to albums. (I always appreciated the opening of the Pitchfork review of the album in this regard.)
  • “Name in Stone”–as far as I can tell–was the only non-album track that was released from this project.
  • “Name in Stone” doesn’t have the same highs as some of the other songs on the album proper (e.g. “My Body’s a Zombie for You” or “Pa Pa Power“)
    • Sub dispatch: “Pa Pa Power” might be one of the more affirming songs I would listen to when I needed a boost. It also might be anarchic, anthemic song we need in this current pandemic moment, “Burn the street, burn the cars, Pa pa power, pa pa power!”
  • It’s weird how Gosling’s career interwove his singing more and more after this album’s release. He does a song in Blue Valentine and then, of course, La La Land a while later. In whatever context you get the same guttural doo-wop-y vocals that are central to Dead Man’s Bones.
  • The video approximates the goofiness of the band’s live shows. The different times I saw them around L.A., the children would be dressed in retro halloween costumes and the opener would be something of a variety show/camp-y magician act. It was very in step with the atmosphere of Dead Man’s Bones: “fun” scary. (You get the vibe in this video, I think.)
  • I appreciate that the “Name in Stone” video feels like a cobbled together, student-film. Like their shows and the album as a whole, it feels like it was fun to make. It was probably a fairly expensive side project that couldn’t have been all that profitable compared to the demands of Hollywood. The band would play a couple unreleased songs at their shows, but I can’t imagine a second album ever making a lot of sense financially.
  • “I raised my flag up into your heart, and you let the winds come tear it apart.”
  • “Uh, Dead Man’s Bones Name in Stone take two. UH.”

1 thought on “Dispatches for Luna & Max (#06)

  1. Peter Carlson

    Fun scary is is the right to chord to play when revisiting Dead Man’s Bones. I first saw the “Name in Stone” playing in the bookroom/abandoned workshop at Manual Arts High School where we housed our Journalism class amidst insane September L.A. heat. For the next three year, every October, this album was playing during passing periods.

    I think the last time I saw the band was in Eagle Rock, and, while waiting to enter the venue (a community center or church, I forget) you showed me how your iPhone was sending you time traveling messages. Fittingly eerie and fun.

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