Gem Club's Porn-Inspired Bedroom Ballads

When you're lost in the haunting ambiance of Gem Club's In Roses, skin flicks will be the last thing on your mind. But escapist music assumes just that--a need for escape--and it's his wild past that queer front man Christopher Barnes is running from and conjuring on the trio's new album.

"It's strange when you see your neighbor in your hall and you're like, 'I know what you do,' " he says of his former living situation in a community of outsiders and porn filmmakers in an abandoned piano warehouse in Boston. "It's alluring and creepy at the same time."

That duality and emotional complexity is all over In Roses: See "Soft Season," about the tragic life of '90s gay porn star Joey Stefano. "I was trying to think what it must be like to live your life like that," Barnes says, "how it could be really glamorous and totally horrible at the same time."

Watch an video teaser for the album In Roses below: