Holy shit I want to be Ryan Gosling. When that blue-smoked apparition of a genie finally explodes out of my refrigerator, pouting his chest out and shouting “Son, you have three wishes — what May they be?,” it’s a guarantee that I will involuntarily blurt out “Make me Gosling.” Without exaggeration, homeboy might be the best young actor going (see “Half Nelson” if you care to try and dispute) but he can also write totally convincing gothic-folk tunes, and he can sing. Motherfucker. Luckily (for me), he can’t completely do it on his own. Teaming up with L.A. buddy Zach Shields and roping in the Silverlake Conservatory of Music Children’s Choir, the two of them have formed Dead Man’s Bones: a collaboration that serves as their shared love letter to the occult.

Topically, the pair drifts casually through moonless-night cemeteries overrun by werewolves, the walking dead and ghosts of lovers past. Often singing with hushed, warbling affects over creaky doo-wop corpses, their sound is one as haunted as it is haunting. The interplay of horror movie imagery and the choral flourishes of the children’s singing are just icing.

Inevitably, comparisons will be drawn to that god-fearing tension inherent in Arcade Fire’s emotive dirges, or the slow-burn meditations of “Yellow House”-era Grizzly Bear — but being roped in with those two is an epic compliment. Is Dead Man’s Bones’ record necessarily as accomplished as either of the aforementioned? Maybe not. But when one half of your band is splitting his vocations by also brandishing his face onto big studio pieces of celluloid, it’s still a mightily impressive debut.

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