Like Vines by The Hush Sound
It’s not often a band’s name is such a blatant lie, but the Hush Sound are anything but quiet.
Smashing piano keys with the force of an angry Ben Folds and banging drums like Animal from the Muppets, this quartet from Illinois don’t really have a low-decibel moment.
Especially during their 2006 album Like Vines, which is like being musically punched in the face, but instead of it hurting, it makes you start dancing.
The album explodes to life with We Intertwined, a song about love with band founders Greta Salpeter and Bob Morris’s lyrics embracing each other like the characters in the song.
The two, who met in High School, share lead vocals throughout the album and switch over with effortless ease, like tag-team wrestlers.
Sweet Tangerine and Lions Roar are other stand-out tracks on the album, crashing into your ears and sounding like musical numbers, backed with big bang-style orchestral bigness.
Even during the so-called softer songs, the strength of the instruments and voices makes it anything but background-music.
Maybe it’s the strength of Salpeter and Morris’s voices, maybe it’s the array of instruments used to bolster each song – an accordian here, a flute there – maybe it’s just good production skills. Whatever is it, it works.
I feel like I’m listening to the soundtrack to a west end play, Salpeter and Morris dueting with pitch-perfect voices. In fact, The Hush Sound – The Musical could work. They already have the songs, just scribble some script about Salpeter and Morris being star-crossed lovers or something and you have a play on your hands.
My friend Kirstine sold me the album off the back of We Intertwined but warned me “the rest of the album isn’t really like it”. She lied.
One slight criticism: Many of the songs are quite samey. I found myself humming one of the songs the other day and going straight into the chorus of a different song.
Sounding strangely like Ok Go, although sadly lacking the treadmill skiing skills to produce anything even close to a music video to match the Chicago-based rockers, The Hush Sound still rock my world. Check ‘em out.
N.B. The band have a newer album out – 2008’s Goodbye Blues. I have it somewhere and have only spun it a few times, but from memory it rocks also. Will review it soon.
