The Gay Blades - yes, really. Photo: Lucia Holm

The Gay Blades are, in fact, only two guys, Clark Westfield a.k.a The Aristocrat of Crime and Puppy Mills—a.k.a The Snitch. And, yeah, you guessed it—they’re from New Jersey. They walk an inventive tightrope of imagination, which is revealed by the drastic differences found throughout the album. And they are bat-shit crazy.

Westfield verifies the previously mentioned contentions and proves both in tandem. “We are songwriters that are all over the map. We just wanted to write a bunch of songs. We’re not just one kind of person, ya know? One day, you might want to go to the circus and have sex with an orangutan. And the next day, you might want to go for a walk in the park and have sex with a robin. Either way, you just have different emotions, different feelings.”

After reading the above paragraph, you might be lead to believe that these guys are, like Mr. Hand thought about everyone in Fast Times at Ridgemont High — on dope. You might be right, but they do prefer a classier path. Clark boasts, “Ultimately, me and him just get a bottle of pinot noir and get weird in the rehearsal space until the song is done. And, then we move forward.”

Whatever their method is, it is working well. “Nevertheless,” Westfield adds, “that pinot noir consumption should take place on the listeners end, too. I tell you what though, if you put that record on, and you just get shit-faced with a bottle of wine, by yourself, with dim lights—the record is the shit. The songs feel completely different. And, I don’t know why that is.”

The cover of Ghosts is almost as weird (or creative) as the band is. It’s a picture of them with—a horse? Westfield luckily explains this decision. “We went down to the racetrack and stole a horse. We rode it on down to Delaware, and we paid a Spanish hooker to take pictures of us. The pictures turned out great after she touched them up. And, that is the story of where the horse came from.”

There you have it, amigos. That is the story of wine, horses and hookers. Clark and Puppy Mills (son of General Mills, of course) are touring the eastern seaboard as of now. They are in the process of planning a tour through Dallas sometime in November. Their album drops on September 23. Look for it soon. In the meantime, you can download a few free tracks on their website. Do they rock? You bet an orangutan’s ass they rock.