Swift Kick

The Hush Sound's guitarist and co-lead vocalist Bob Morris has his hands full. His band is set to open tonight for Fall Out Boy and the All-American Rejects, his mother won't stop ringing him (she's in line outside, confused by how to collect her ticket), and, oh yeah, there's this interview to contend with. Luckily, Morris hasn't realized any of this should leave him stressed.

If you haven't heard of his band, that's probably because you've had steaks in your freezer longer than the Hush Sound has existed. The band recorded its debut, So Sudden, last spring after only three months together, and it wasn't long after it self-released the 13 tracks that Ryan Ross of Panic! At the Disco urged Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy to sign the Hush Sound to his Fueled by Ramen-backed Decaydance Records (also home to Panic!).

"All of us except Greta [Salpeter, piano/guitar/co-vocalist] had been in local bands before, and we knew when you're playing shows and nobody knows your songs, it's no fun," Morris explains. "So once we figured out how to play the songs, we just went in and recorded it."

For their self-produced effort, they got an album chock-full of folk pop with healthy doses of swing, classic rock, and classical music to quirk up the piano-driven melodies. The eclectic sound, an endearingly uneven mix, was, however, entirely unintentional.

"The sound's just all over the place, really," Morris admits. "We had no specific idea what we were trying to do. We were just trying to do something we hadn't done before."

Their blind swinging struck a chord with Wentz, who quickly got them back in the studio to record a follow-up, Like Vines, to be released this June -- on the same day they hit the road with Panic! At the Disco for a co-headlining tour.

"It's definitely an extension of our thoughts on So Sudden," Morris says. "It's a lot more professional, and not only the sound and the arrangements. We put a lot more thought into it. Instead of being so sudden, it's so thought out."

Once in the studio, the experience of recording Like Vines proved to be "the polar opposite" of So Sudden. "With So Sudden, it was fun because we didn't really have to worry about anyone else," Morris says, regarding having producers Sean O'Keefe (FOB, Motion City Soundtrack) and co-producer Patrick Stump of FOB in the studio with the Hush Sound this time around. "We just got to play music, which was amazing. This time, we knew how much we were learning. It was like taking four years of college in three weeks of recording."

But that pretty much sums up the Hush Sound's existence: turning out music that sounds like the product of another band's lifetime. Morris, for one, isn't willing to say he didn't expect to be here, playing in the big leagues so soon.

"Well, if you don't think that when you're starting a band, that you're going to do this, you shouldn't start a band," he says. "You're starting a hobby, not a career."