It might be time to start calling Caleb Landry Jones a double threat. The young actor’s rapid ascent in the film industry has hardly hindered his longtime passion for music. Days after being named “Best Actor” at the 74th annual Cannes Film Festival, the Texas native dropped “Bogie,” the lead single for his upcoming second album Gadzooks Vol. 1.
Although Jones has been acting in movies since 2007 (he was the kid on the bike in “No Country for Old Men”), music was a simultaneous pursuit. He first formed an experimental folk-rock band, Robert Jones, in 2009, but the project was short-lived. In 2017, he achieved breakout success in the movies with memorable roles in “Get Out” and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.” Since then, Jones has made a decidedly more deliberate foray into the music industry. In 2020, he recorded The Mother Stone — an album blending psychedelia, rock, and pop elements — with Robert Hudson, his bandmate from a decade earlier. (“Rarely do you encounter music this bombastic and unreasonable,” wrote Pitchfork.) A few short months later, Jones began writing Gadzooks Vol. 1 while filming “Finch,” a Tom Hanks sci-fi vehicle set for release on Apple TV+ later this year.
Like The Mother Stone, Jones’ follow-up will be produced by Nic Jodoin and released via Sacred Bones Records. The Brooklyn-based indie label has long been a haven for musical side projects from offbeat filmmakers like David Lynch, John Carpenter, and Jim Jarmusch. The latter director, who worked with Jones on 2019’s “The Dead Don’t Die,” reportedly recommended him to Sacred Bones after hearing his demos.
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Jones was awarded at Cannes for his work on Justin Kurzel’s “Nitram,” in which he portrays Martin Bryant, the perpetrator of the 1996 Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania. Reviews for the film have been mixed, but Jones’ unsettling performance has been singled out as a career-high point. Gadzooks Vol. 1 will be released on September 24. Listen to “Bogie” below.