The HUSH SOUND The band's new album pleases fans of all genres.

The Hush Sound makes starting a band look easy. Two months after forming in January of 2005, the Chicago band - singer-pianist Greta Salpeter, singer-guitarist Bob Morris, bassist Chris Faller and drummer Darren Wilson - had signed to Pete Wentz's Decaydance label, an imprint of Fueled by Ramen, and released its debut, So Sudden. Toward the end of 2006, the group had released its sophomore album, Like Vines, and toured with Panic at the Disco and Fall Out Boy. They were about to start their own headline tour.

And they wanted to break up.

The tour with Fall Out Boy was the group's first tour, and while the headliners were traveling in a bus, the members of the Hush Sound were taking turns driving a van. They hadn't slept in a hotel for three weeks, and they spent their time arguing over who got to put his or her cell-phone charger in the cigarette lighter. By the end of the tour, things were picking up for the band musically, but it was a different story offstage.

"We basically just ripped each other's hair out," Morris says in a phone interview. "It was just the most stressful thing in the world."

Although he doesn't want to go into details about why the band almost broke up, Morris says it was fueled by the most insignificant things, and lack of sleep only made it worse.

"In retrospect it was the most ridiculous thing in the world that drove us to that point. It really was just exhaustion," he says. "When you're super-exhausted or in a bad mood, the smallest thing in the world - which is pretty much what it was - almost broke our band up."

After they told their management they wanted to break up, they agreed to wait until after their own tour. Turns out all it took was a headline tour to bring the band together.

"At this point we're like, okay, we did a headlining tour, and now that we had some people working for us, everything was a little bit easier for us," Morris says. "We weren't doing everything on our own, and it made us actually enjoy being on tour and enjoy each other. We realized that we were looking at the wrong things and we were just so grateful to play music."

Now the Hush Sound is back on tour supporting Goodbye Blues, a record that's full of swing, jazz and pop rock, making it one of those rare albums that can please music fans of all genres. It's exactly what the group wanted to do.

"With any album, for us it's really difficult to be like, okay, we're a rock band or we're a jazz band or we're this band," Morris says. "And really, the idea is we want songs that people want to sing along to, that make people feel good. And that doesn't mean that it has to be anything, it just means it has to be good. For us we would never want to write an album that just sounds one way the whole way through because then we'd be Nickelback."

With tracks like "Honey" and "The Boys Are too Refined," Salpeter's voice sounds older, which is a surprising turn from the pop-heavy songs she sang on Like Vines. The album goes from the early American jazz-inspired song "Medicine Man" to the piano ballad "Hurricane" and into "As You Cry," which sounds like a song several bands signed to Fueled By Ramen would write. It's the band's most innovative album, one that could help shape the rest of the Hush Sound's career, which is surprising considering Goodbye Blues was written when the band was breaking up. It's also the first album where the band focused more on making an album that's a cohesive package, instead of a handful of good songs.

"You write the songs however you write them, but when it comes to arranging, you have to know what works for your band, and it has nothing to do with anyone hearing your band. It has something to do with the way you feel when you're playing your songs, and you have to know, okay, this is what should be happening during this part, and this is why," Morris says. "Once you start to get that concept, which we've started to on this album, you really can do a lot more with music."

With their past issues aside, the members of the Hush Sound finally feel comfortable with one another musically and nonmusically. They haven't been together long, but with three albums, sold-out shows and a potential break-up, the band's career thus far resembles an episode of Behind the Music.

"I think every band goes through that, and I'm really glad we went through it at the beginning because it could have been nothing, and now when it is something, when it will be something, we won't have to worry about any sort of petty crap," Morris says. "We're all in this together, and we'd all pretty much kill anyone for each other. I don't have anything to worry about."

The Hush Sound, The Cab, Steel Train, Morning Light: 6 p.m. Sunday, July 13 at the Grog Shop, 2785 Euclid Heights Blvd., Cleveland Heights, 216.321.5588. Tickets: $14.