The Young Sea rises as a band ready to storm the stage

So much has changed since The Young Sea last shared a PBR with me (not to mention a lovely Tuna Helper dinner offer, thank you very much) two winters ago at their borrowed practice space in Lake Geneva.

For one, they officially adopted their new name, The Young Sea -- thanks to the fine poetics of Illinois' Carl Sandburg, of course. It's a big step forward for the locally popular suburban quartet, previously known as reggae-induced rock outfit Triptii, which they formed five years ago in high school of all places. But perhaps the biggest note of progress for fans and critics alike is their new sound. The boys of Triptii cultivated an identity that clearly reflects the four friends' musical maturity -- maturity that benefits from the past year-and-a-half break. They've become thickly instrumental but heavily, and smartly, chorus-focused songwriters who've discovered their paths as story engineers via guitar riffs that seem to simultaneously resurrect shadows of The Police, Mogwai and the Editors.

To think, it all erupted during their week's stay in Lake Geneva over a $9 Tombstone pizza at a bar they found because it happened to be the closest thing to their makeshift studio. Still, the effects of the night continue to remain sharp.

"As ridiculous as it was, did we pay the $9 for the Tombstone?" singer Kevin Prchal asks around the room, absentmindedly plucking his guitar like he hadn't stopped since the last time I'd seen him.

"Yeah," drummer Marty Fornelli says. "I think it was an afterthought. I think we found out it was $9 afterward … or we saw it was a $9 pizza, and we thought it was going to be a good pizza."

Laughter abounds. For all intents and purposes, these are the exact same guys I talked to well over a year ago, who padded the Lake Geneva house's windows with pillows and blankets to cushion the sound of their jam. They're the same guys who teetered between musical paths and wondered where Triptii fans would come out in the end. And aside from the recent addition of Neil Hyneman (Captain Cinch, Owl), they're the same musicians who've remained confident enough in their style changes to consider scrapping the past and starting again from scratch.

All it took was the answer to one question: Is Triptii done?

"We argued it for a while," Prchal says, "and the conclusion was yes. … We already had a show booked for the Fat Bean, and we decided that that was going to be our last show."

It was a tough decision, but arguably one of their best, according to the band members themselves. They'd reached a fork in the road that many artists encounter and few handle delicately enough to successfully move forward: Their influences changed, their sound morphed and they essentially swapped rap for swirling, lyrical rock. The end result is their self-titled EP, released July 27 at The Young Sea's first ever live set (the guys' first show in 17 months), which sounds so natural that you'd never guess the group ever even parodied a former reggae band. It's proof to outsiders that Prchal and company never questioned their change in musical direction so much as they smacked it up against a bigger problem: Keeping the old moniker and new sound misleads fans about the band's direction. But adopting a new name could alienate their fanbase entirely.

"I don't think any of us felt comfortable rapping at shows anymore or playing the kind of music that we were," Prchal says. "And I think that collectively the music that we all listen to didn't compliment the music we had written or were writing."

"We started in high school," guitarist Mike Lojkutz adds. "And in high school, we were in five different places then we are three or four years later."

The transition became apparent just before they left for Lake Geneva at the beginning of 2006. That's when a stream of mainly rock songs, including an acutely Police-driven and perhaps radio-bound track called "Redwood," popped up during practices. The songs eventually developed into a rough EP, and the future of a reinvented band called The Young Sea seemed set.

"I think naturally the songs, or the jams, we were working on when we were there (were) a very natural progression for us," Prchal says. "I don't think we were trying to do anything; it just came out sounding like so much different and more of what we wanted to do."

The last time I talked to them, though, the new name came up and quickly died down. They clearly weren't ready to talk about it. And they wouldn't be until this May. Turns out, after that fateful, contemplative night over bar food in Wisconsin, the band went home and didn't write music together until that summer. Even then, they never met as a whole. Summer passed and faded into fall, and The Young Sea's sound gained layers but song tracks were recorded separately, individually. It wouldn't be until this winter that they'd finally piece it all together during three-hour chunks in Dan Monahan's (Last Fast Action, Dog & Everything) studio.

Sitting around bassist Scott Turner's Naperville abode as the five-piece Young Sea, the mood is positive. One show in, a new EP freshly pressed and hopes to tour and write new songs under a genre they all love, starting over never sounded so good. Though they still hint at lingering trepidation (Prchal wonders aloud about who The Young Sea's music will attract), they look forward to the road ahead. Or at least to their second show as a new band.

"Now it's kind of like our sound," Lojkutz says, "instead of lots of different sounds, lots of bits put together."