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Rockers ‘Sound’ off on upcoming album

In pop music today, with its recyclable tunes and less-than-credible stars (Ashlee Simpson… Need I say more?), “genuine” is a word not often thrown into the ring when describing the genre. But somehow a few artists manage to transcend the MySpace-and tabloid-ridden world of pop that often distracts listeners. With the release of their third album, Goodbye Blues, Chicago quartet The Hush Sound proves to be a group that rises above pop music’s low standards.

Shortly after signing with Pete Wentz’s vanity label Decaydance Records in 2005, The Hush Sound released Like Vines, a warm pop album that — despite little airplay and promotion — received critical praise as well as relative commercial success. The only problem was that Like Vines deviated from the more lo-fi, Fleetwood Mac sound the band employed on their first release, So Sudden, in favor of a more polished pop-punk sound.

In a recent interview with The Badger Herald, The Hush Sound’s lead vocalist and guitarist, Bob Morris, attributed this to the production.

“With Like Vines, we still had never gone on tour, and we kind of just let Sean [O’ Keefe] record our songs in the way he wanted to record them.”

But with Goodbye Blues, the band took a different approach — and seemingly the correct one. After a short search, they concluded there was only one man to produce their next album, and The Hush Sound passed the reins to Kevin Augunas.

“[Augunas] just recorded the Cold War Kids’ album Robbers & Cowards, and we were really into the way that sounded,” Morris said. “We wanted [Goodbye Blues] to sound raw and awesome like that.”

Perhaps the best testimonial to this claim can be heard on the pre-released track “Medicine Man” on the band’s MySpace page.

But loyal fans of Like Vines should not be too worried that this album will be a complete divergence from the “hush-sound.” Greta Salpeter’s blossoming voice still graces 10 of the album’s 13 songs, with the album’s first single, “Honey,” being no exception. And the swinging rock rhythms that made songs like “Wine Red” and “Crawling Towards the Sun” dark-horse favorites are still intact. The band has even continued the unofficial tradition of offering a pop-hero cameo, only this time Patrick Stump has given way to the pop-producer-extraordinaire Butch Walker.

Goodbye Blues appears to have all the makings of a successful, musically respectable album, but unfortunately and perhaps unfairly, The Hush Sound are frequently lumped into the same category as pop-punk acts who draw more commercial success from style rather than substance (Panic at the Disco, Fall Out Boy and the All-American Rejects). If this is the case, one must wonder if anyone with a driver’s license will ever take them seriously and be able to look past this unwarranted association. 

“I think it’s a misconception that we are specifically trying to only target a certain audience,” Morris said. “What we really want to do is just affect anyone who is listening to music. We have our own aspirations to reach a lot more people than [those] who just like Fall Out Boy.”