Gosling is made up of singer-songwriter Ingersoll, drummer Isaac Carpenter, bassist Shane Middleton, and keyboardist/guitarist Mark Watrous. The technical prowess and stylistic fluidity is genuinely reflected in their first five influences listed on My Space: “Queen, Pink Floyd, Elvis Presley, Nation Of Ulysses, and Soundgarden.”

Gosling is four young but very adept musicians who have been playing together since they grew up in the teenage wasteland of Tri-Cities, Washington, juxtaposing intricate musicianship with synergistic impulsivity. “We each give each other a lot of freedom, because especially at this point, we’re old enough to realize what each other’s roles are, and just relax,” the laid back Carpenter says.

Opening with the watery dissonance of distorted guitar strum and a serpentine bass-line for a forty-three second “Intro,” Gosling the band then sets the perniciously rocking yet still very controlled stage for “Mr. Skeleton Wings,” a wicked lamentation about the mortality of fame and a joyful celebration of sex and death. It’s as if the Sex Pistols has embraced prog rock instead of punk when kicking off “Never Mind The Bullocks.”

‘When money’s in the bank it seems like nothing’s out of reach/God never showed you lessons I could teach,’ Ingersoll sneers, obviously spiteful of the world’s vanities. This would just be caustic poetry compellingly sung, but Carpenter kicks off a bullet spray of bass drum triplets, Watrous fills the canvas with entrancing piano, while Ingersoll’s shattering guitar and Middleton’s torrid bass makes the psychodrama seem somehow both mordant and jaunty. ‘If you want me I’m at the top of the heap… if you climb over all the bodies we’ll meet,’ the rabidly infectious chorus teases, Not planning to be removed from your mind anytime soon.

The album opener is quickly followed by the equally theatrical and traumatic “Worm Waltz,” the chilling downward spiral tale “The Burnout” the darkly flirtatious and melodically subversive “Come Into My Room,” the sweetly anarchistic “Stealing Stars,” the stark emotional maturity and clarity of “Afraid of Nineveh,” and the vicious self-examination of “One Hand Two Hand.” Not since Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ has such a big-sounding rock band confessed secrets so intimate and so universal.

One could spend all day diving deeply into Gosling’s music and enjoying the bigness of it, how in a strange sense of wonder it is made, but the strange loving sweetness of the song’s actual meanings come from a place of real emotional turbulence that the band went through together.

“A lot of the songs aren’t me trying to tell somebody something, or explain to somebody how I think,” Ingersoll continues, “It was more of me trying to figure out how I think about something in the first place.

The whole song writing process for this was much more of a soul-searching experience than any other way that I’ve written. It’s not ‘this is who I am, and I’m trying to show the world that,’ but I was trying to find out who I was by writing and the record is a document of what was written.’ And so these lyrics would come up and sometimes they would be a surprise to me.”

Growing up in the various towns that inhabit the Tri-Cities in desolate Eastern Washington, Gosling was brought together by Ingersoll and Carpenter’s mutual love for The Smashing Pumpkins and Sunny Day Real Estate, and the fact that both had an insatiable hunger to make music.

“I just really grew up on a lot of classic rock, I guess,” Ingersoll says, “anything that was kind of daring.

“Shane was in Isaac’s early bands before I met either of them.” Ingersoll continues, “They had been playing together for quite a while. Shane really provides a support for the band. He’s not there for his own agenda. He’s there to help bring all of the ideas to fruition.”

“Mark was actually a drummer at the time in another band,” Ingersoll says. “And as I started to become friends with him I began to realize how talented he was, and how versatile he was.”

“Mark gives our band depth, he thinks of things Davey and I don’t think about -- he gives us all those textures,” adds Carpenter. “He’s also a brilliant visual artist which has become an important part of our band’s esthetic.”

“Gosling at this point has grown up together and it’s hard to even wrap your head around how much we rely on each other,” Ingersoll confesses.

“As for the diversity in our sound, it’s kind of like you know – our blessing is our curse?” Ingersoll laughs. “I have huge respect for these bands that can really cull together a definitive sound, and then kind of stick to that. It’s just not us, and it’s a waste of time to try to be that. We just tried to write as freely and uninhibited as we could, and then at the end we just pulled together the things that we felt could make the most cohesive record.”

Where Ingersoll is the band’s primary song writer, Carpenter organically takes the roll as Gosling’s music director. “I basically ate, slept, and lived that album, not just the mixing for two months, but creating it over the span of a year,” Carpenter says. “So it will be nice to get out of the studio environment and writing and recording, and just go out into the world,” Ingersoll enthuses about their upcoming tour.