Substitute Teacher 02 - Georgia Hampton
Did y'all know about Dead Man's Bones??? The most haunted indie album of all time.
Welcome to Max’s Music Mondays, a music discovery newsletter. Normally, I find two songs from artists you might not know but absolutely should. But once a month I like to do something different! That’s this! Hope you enjoy <3 Come back again soon for more new music.
Well well well… the long-awaited (by me at least) second edition of MMM’s new series - Substitute Teacher. A new(ish) feature, giving music lovers who I admire the chance to talk about the artists, albums, songs that mean a lot to them. Last time, Romy taught us all about Angie McMahon.
Wow, isn’t this a dream? OR IS IT A NIGHTMARE! That’s right, we’re going absolutely spooky mode this week. I’m so so excited for our second substitute teacher. It really felt like the music gods (and halloween demons?!? ok I’ll stop I’ll stop) were smiling upon us for this one. When I wrote out a list of people who I’d like to hear from in these posts, this week’s guest was a no-brainer.
Georgia Hampton is a journalist and podcast producer, currently working on the incredible show, Never Post. The show has quickly become one of my favs, so thoughtfully made with some of the most interesting, insightful conversations around The Internet and its effect on our culture. For example, Georgia’s latest segment explored the safety and privacy of online communities (can there ever be any, anymore?), with so many great stories before that too - an interview about the role of AI in hiring, an investigative look to find meaning in how people use tinder (leading to her… well, no spoilers) and so many more.
I can’t recommend the show enough, it’s curious, brilliant, and generally optimistic about what’s possible in this world. The second an episode ends my brain is racing, inspiring so much thought and conversation. The show is made with so much heart, it’s a genuine guiding light in how to create something great for us here at Max’s Music Mondays. But this week is about Georgia! Not the show!!
Georgia and I met as like… 8 year olds? We went to elementary school together, high school, college, and grateful to say we’ve found ourselves as better and better internet (and dare i say, real??) friends over the last couple years. But! Maybe more important than all of this, Georgia has made a brand for herself as a lover of all things ~spooky~. Especially the infamous 12ft Home Depot skeletons. What started as pure joy and amusement, has now become her (certainly still joyful) societal duty. Friends from all over the country spotting these freaks (complimentary) and sending them straight to Georgia. You’ll then find them shared to her IG story. It’s a beautiful brand to have fostered, and frankly one of my favorite things to see on IG. So, when the stars aligned to have her join us this Halloween week… oof, I knew we we're in for a treat. Or a trick?! I’m actually so sorry. Anyways, let’s get on with it.
You can find Georgia Hampton:
On Instagram
On their website
Take out your notebooks and put away your phones (unless you’re reading this on your phone). Class is in session!!! Introducing Georgia Hampton, on Dead Man’s Bones.
The arrival of October brings with it my annual quest to find music that perfectly encapsulates the Halloween season — the sonic equivalent of wandering down a leaf-littered path through the woods just as it starts to get dark. I have very specific criteria for what I want: a listening experience that’s spooky, lightly nostalgic, and a little bit evil. Over the years, I’ve found a handful of songs that get me there, and I’ll dutifully add them to my seasonal playlist. But the truth is that, frankly, my search for that perfect Halloween sound ended a long time ago. Because nobody, nobody does it like Dead Man’s Bones.
Every fall I return to them, and the album they put out in 2009 of the same name — a “one and done” project made by two friends who shared the same obsession with ghosts, the Haunted Mansion ride at Disney World, and graveyards. The friends were Zach Shields and, I’m not kidding, Ryan Gosling, who delightfully goes under the pseudonym “Baby Goose” for the album.
The premise of the album Dead Man’s Bones was simple: make a soundtrack for a ghostly love story. And love is the undead heart beating at the center of every song, a kind of gothic yearning meant to pass through the veil that separates the world of the living and the world beyond. The entities looking for love are your classic creeps — zombies, ghosts, and werewolves. Sometimes, love itself is personified as having demonic or otherworldly qualities. And that means that the desire we’re treated to is often eerie, or obsessive, or scary.
Nowhere else is this more true than “In The Room Where You Sleep,” where Gosling warbles the lyrics “I saw something sitting on your bed / I saw something touching your head / In the room where you sleep.” But his lamenting vocals, a standout throughout the album, soon turn spooky here, as he growls out the song’s chorus “You better run / You better hide” over and over, a warning that is as delicious as it is doomed.
This flavor of “spooky love” is perfected with the album’s most notable, and in my opinion most genius, choice: to collaborate with the Silverlake Conservatory’s Children’s Choir, who accompany Shields and Gosling on every track. I mean, come on, there’s nothing more equally unsettling and charming than the thin voices of a group of children yelling “My body’s a zombie for you!” followed by a chorus of ghostly “whoa-oh”’s.
And that song specifically, “My Body’s A Zombie For You,” is a uniquely excellent example of why this album, and this group, is something special. The track itself is a desperate ballad, in which Gosling’s vocals create the effect of someone who’s singing through tears. He chokes through the lyrics “The smell on my breath / from the blood in your neck / Oh I hold my soul / From the lands unknown / So I can play the strings of your death.” But after the music fades, we’re not ferried to the next song right away. Instead, we get treated to a moment behind the scenes, as individual kids re-rehearse their vocals in a now-cavernous sounding room. And, even better, it closes out with a small group of children chanting “I’m a Z-O-M-B-I-E, zombie!” on repeat — invoking a posse of little cheerleaders in creepy face paint.
The penultimate song in the album bottles this spooky playfulness — the title track “Dead Man’s Bones.” “Dig a hole / in the middle of the street,” Gosling croons, “Dig it down / Dig it down / Six - feet - deep” But just like “In The Room Where You Sleep,” this eerie calm soon explodes into a chorus that feels like both a promise and a threat. To a backing track of ghostly howls by the children’s choir, he shouts “Wherever you go / take a look at your feet / down six feet deep there’s dead man’s bones / Bones! Bones! Bones, bones, bones, bones!”
The whole album is scrappy by design. Shields and Gosling followed a few crucial rules — such as never using a click track, and never recording a song more than three times — which allowed any matter of little imperfections to stay in the final cut. Every song is simple in its instrumentation, with tracks often relying on nothing more than rhythmic clapping or the plinking of a piano for large sections of time. The result feels like listening to a project produced by some kind of haunted elementary school where everyone, teachers and students alike, join in a ghostly chorus.
It certainly helps that Shields, Gosling, and the kids are featured as the album cover in what I can only describe as what would be the yearbook photo of Halloween Club. Kids dress in a wide range of costumes: there’s an Edward Scissorhands, a skeleton with a big cartoon heart, a pirate, a mummy, and even a classic sheet ghost. And there, flanking the group are Shields and Gosling, stone faced and soberly dressed in button down shirts: the chaperones for this haunted field trip to the underworld.
Folks… I mean… STANDING OVATION!!! This kind of essay is exactly what I envisioned for Substitute Teacher posts. A true pro taking us on a (haunted) tour of something they love.
Honestly, I had never heard of this record, and am so grateful to have heard it now. Consider my halloween party soundtracked. It is actually too scary for me in moments, the kids chanting z-o-m-b-i-e really had me on edge. But hearing the tender and skilled artistry of Gosling is scary in it’s own way. How dare someone be so multi-talented!
Full of fun choruses, freightening writing that sticks to the vision so well, daring sonic choices, all resulting in a one-of-one album that is just flat out good. I love this, and am so glad Georgia could share it with all of us this week.
Again, please go say thank you!!!!
I’ll be back next week with more.
Trick or treat,
Max