When placed in the controlled setting of a conference call, the three twenty-something musicians would rather talk about anything from Radiohead (“In the past they struck me as not of this earth, this time they struck me as a rock and roll band,” says Gallagher) to U2 (“We’re in their video because we are really cool and hip,” he quips [check out “Window in the Skies”]) to jambands (“I think some jambands want to play with us because they think it will get them out of the jamband scene,” Cohen adds) than the creative process.

And when gathered in a small tent to record an episode of Relix’s Cold Turkey podcast , they’d rather spike a version of John Lennon’s “Cold Turkey” with dirty jokes than rap about their current project, the layered, artful Shall Noise Upon. For this trio, it seems that Steve Martin’s old adage that “talking about music is like dancing about architecture” rings true. Not that the members of Apollo Sunshine haven’t spent their fair share of time talking about music.

Like their occasional tour companions The Slip and Marco Benevento, Apollo Sunshine’s story begins at Boston’s prestigious Berklee College of Music where Black and Cohen studied for a time after high school. While in Boston, the budding musicians met Gallagher, himself a Berklee dropout, and, after playing informally for a few months, officially started Apollo Sunshine in 2001. Boston’s web of clubs and college parties gave the group ample opportunity to carve out an original sound that drew equal inspiration from the three musicians’ punk roots, Flaming Lips’ psychedelic theatrics and their Berklee-honed precision.

The group developed a loyal following and hit the road while most of their classmates were left studying.

“We just kind of took off, gave up our apartments and were constantly touring,” Gallagher says in his typical matter-of-fact manner. “And things really went from there.”

Road life not only awarded Apollo Sunshine a chance to fine-tune its chops, but to develop a highly entertaining live show that’s included everything from ukulele jams to gum laced with faux-acid to mid-set basketball games. The trio also scored opening spots for everyone from My Morning Jacket to Deadboy and The Elephant Men to Wu-Tang Clan.

“Wu-Tang’s fans were trying to hit our amps because they were seeing a rock band,” Black admits. “But by the end of the show they were like, ‘These guys have balls!’”

“We made our first album before we even had a label,” Cohen says about Katonah, a project the trio recorded in Black’s hometown with the aid of a Berklee professor. “We were all super young and psyched.” That album featured a number of standout tracks, including the catchy, unsettlingly upbeat sing-along, “I Was on the Moon.”

For a brief period of time the group added guitarist Sean Aylward to the mix, the first of several auxiliary musicians the trio has used to round out its sound (Mazarin’s Quentin Stoltzfus toured with the group for a spell in 2007 and, as of late, a percussionist simply known as Oli has been sitting in with the group). “We’re good at finding someone on the side of the road and being like ‘Come aboard, dude,’” jokes Black, the band’s most thoughtful and levelheaded member. “It’s nice to have someone thrown in the mix and I can see us kind of expanding our lineup at times.”

In 2005, Apollo Sunshine returned to the studio with Aylward to record its self-titled follow-up, a fresh, fast-paced collection of songs that consciously captured the group’s live energy. Perhaps even more than its predecessor, Apollo Sunshine found the group honing in on a definitive sound that married fuzzy, dark, bass-heavy riffs with sunny, 1960s harmonies on tracks like “Today is the Day” and the almost surf-rock anthem “Flip!” The band continued a barn-burning tour schedule that included a trek to South By Southwest music conference/ festival with friends The Slip and Sam Champion. Thanks to that tour and appearances at festivals such as Langerado, High Sierra and Bonnaroo, Apollo also made its first real waves in the hippie-rock scene, a union that made sense, given the group’s psychedelic roots.

“We do improvise on some songs, but not on every one of them,” says Black. “I saw the Grateful Dead when I was 14, but I was more into punk rock. Jesse says that one time in high school he saw Widespread Panic but he was too stoned to get into it and thought they blew.”

The trio entered the studio in 2007 to begin work on Shall Noise Upon, its most mature and experimental statement to date. Largely recorded in the Catskill Mountains, Shall Noise Upon—an anagram of Apollo Sunshine—is a sharp departure from the group’s previous albums: a carefully layered, at times trippy collection that owes more to modern freak-folk than punk-influenced indie. “It's hard to get outside yourself, but I tried to write less about what is going on in my life and my experiences. It’s more of an Apollo Sunshine feel than a ‘Sam’ or ‘Jesse’ album,” Gallagher responds. “Our lyrics can be more stripped down if they are more sincere,” Cohen adds. “Or maybe we’re getting old,” Gallagher cracks.

Indeed, while it’s not entirely correct to say that the young musicians have mellowed with age, key Shall Noise Upon tracks like the bastardized Beatles pop nugget “666: The Coming of the New World,” the Latin-influenced “Honestly” and the pedal steel-laced “Fog and Shadow” find the group fleshing out its sound with additional instruments and guests like the members of Drug Rug, Viva Viva and even Gallagher’s father.

“This is the first record we had our hands on from start to finish,” Gallagher admits.

“We had the ability to work it until we felt good,” Black interjects. “We got into music from these different cultures. We weren’t trying to make an album that we could perform live. It was an experiment.”

And though they sing about a hopeful, prosperous day to come on the gentle “Money,” and half-joke that they are broke, the future is bright for Apollo Sunshine: The group has hipster cred, jamband loyalty, an art-school education and, most importantly, isn’t afraid to do what they what when they want.

“It would be amazing to financially live and write in the studio or maybe we’ll make a dance album,” Black muses. “The style of our band is whatever the three of us feel like at the time.”

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