Caliente

Hem puts modern spin on countrypolitan

Hem makes use of mandolin, banjo and pedal steel guitar, but it's no country band. Along with the traditional twangs are blissful folk and Americana inflections, enchanting vocals and the lush backdrop of a 60-piece orchestra. Hem's modern take on countrypolitan music creates hushed acoustic lullabies that nestle somewhere between Ray Charles' 1962 album "Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music" and the 1980s sounds of the Cowboy Junkies. Songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Dan Messé started Hem in 1999 as a side project to the songwriting career with which he was frustrated. "It was literally so much pressure to write cool songs," he said in a phone interview from a tour stop in Omaha, Neb. "By 'cool' it had to be really generic and nothing that could be made fun of. You had to make fun of other things. And I just wanted to write, as a reaction to that, songs that could totally be made fun of - that were totally open emotionally or totally childlike and innocent." Messé teamed up with guitar and mandolin players Gary Maurer and Steve Curtis, and he found the unforgettably haunting voice that completes Hem in Sally Ellyson. They put together a team of friends and hired musicians to create the layered, timeless sound. Hem recorded an album and gave 500 copies to friends and family members. All the feedback was the same, Messé said - it's beautiful but not commercially viable. Regardless, the band planned a gig. "We all thought it would be a nice thing to do for ourselves and then be done with it," he said. "When we showed up for the show, there was a line around the block of people who we didn't even know. People had given it (the record) to other people. We realized then that there was an audience for what we wanted to do." DreamWorks rereleased "Rabbit Songs" in 2001, and the band began working on a second album. "We knew we were influenced by these more countrypolitan lush sounds, and we wanted it," Messé said. "We started looking around the country for places to do it, and all the old studios that they used to make those records are closed down; the rooms don't exist anymore. We started asking around, and we found out that the Slovak Radio Orchestra in Bratislava (the capital of Slovakia) recorded in a room that was just like those old recording studios that used to house the orchestras that made the records we love." The band went to Slovakia, and despite language, cultural and technological barriers, Hem got the sound it wanted. The result is 2004's "Eveningland," an album full of the honest, innocent, lullabylike songs Messé was searching for. However, "Eveningland" is far from simplistic. "A lot of it comes from working with Sally," Messé said of the music's subtle complexity. "When Gary and I were producing the record, we wanted to make sure that nothing got in the way of her voice. So we wind up carving these huge frequency holes in the arrangement for Sally's voice to exist. Then we realized if we do that with her voice, we could do that for every instrument. We could have this very lush sound, but it still sounds very spare." Much like a lullaby that is whispered and hushed despite the emotional subject matter, Hem leaves room for listeners to have their own emotional reactions to the music. "The way Sally delivers these lyrics, she's always a step removed emotionally," Messé said. "She doesn't overdo it emotionally, and I think it allows for people to enter the song on their own terms." The eight-piece Hem is bringing its dreamy songs to Plush on Friday. "This album is definitely about comfort," Messé said. "That's the overall theme of the record, and that's why I think we make music. Life is hard, and if we can find comfort in things like music and song and a beautiful voice, it definitely helps you get through the hard patches."