While being no more than three years on the scene, Akron’s Shivering Timbers has bloomed rapidly into one of the most touted bands from the Northeast Ohio region. Composed of husband-and-wife duo Jayson and Sarah Benn, the group’s sound comprises folk-tinged indie rock that blends enough styles to make it nearly uncategorizable. The band’s strength is in its ability to shift dynamically from sing-songy nursery rhymes to noisy jams that bring to mind the more cohesive compositions of Cap ‘n Jazz. In between, the group dabbles between gospel, punk and blues. The band’s records are truly a testament to the love of music and the creative process, two things that are essential to producing something that’s honest. The sound is driven on by Jayson’s versatile guitar-playing and Sarah’s vocal prowess, which has been compared to Patsy Cline and P.J. Harvey. She also does double duty on the bass. While the band could leverage its position as a married couple as a marketing ploy, playing up the cutesy factor, it thankfully chooses to go an opposite route and downplay the fact. Most audience members have no idea. In fact, the only real hint that gives it away is the couple’s tendency to inadvertently finish one another’s sentences. “It’s kind of hard to deny being married when we dedicate a whole album to our child,” Sarah said. “But we aren’t too sappy on stage, like half making out. “Here’s my wife over here, the bass player,” Jayson jokingly added. Initially, the band didn’t know how to handle it, leaving them to determine it would be best to just treat each other like any other band member. “It has its ups and downs,” Sarah explained of working with her husband creatively. “But I think it makes the band stronger in a way, because we are both committed. We can’t just say ‘Forget this, I quit,’ we have to stick together.” Jayson agreed, saying it has its pluses and minus, and added: “I can’t be too much of a dick to my bandmate, because at the end of the day, she’s still my wife. That kind of eases the band’s tension, but it also adds to it sometimes. There’s a balance that we kind of have to work around.” While the band is fairly well-known, regularly playing out and performing at a number of larger festivals, such as Nelsonville Musical Festival in southern Ohio, it actually didn’t start with the intention of doing any such things. “The first album was made before we were even a band out playing shows,” Sarah said. “It was just something fun to do in Dan Auerbach’s studio. It was after that we found our sound and really evolved into a band. This album is more of a debut as to who we are as a band; the first album was more of its own thing.” Sarah said it was not long after the band started working with drummer Brad Thorla and playing shows that momentum started to build. In addition to Thorla, the band occasionally also works with David Marchione on drums. It was only after the release of the first record (which was dedicated to the couple’s daughter, Suzi) and the attention it brought that the Sarah and Jayson realized what they had. “Once we got a drummer that we really liked and gelled with musically, we realized that we really liked where this was going and wanted to pursue it,” Sarah said. The Shivering Timbers are getting ready to release their sophomore effort, something they say took a considerable amount more work than its predacessor. “It took a lot longer, for one thing,” Jayson said. “We tracked for seven days down in Cincinnati, whereas the first record was just three days.” Sarah said that before going into this recording session, the band knew to expect everything to take three times longer then they planned. She explained that after tracking, the group spent a month working on overdubbing tracks when they could and then spent three days mixing at Dan Auerbach’s studio in Nashville. “That was grueling,” Sarah said. “Long days without any real breaks, it was just go, go, go. Trying to constantly process what’s going on.” The songs on the new record, Jayson explained, have been worked on and played live for the past year and a half, further solidifying them. While the group has found its sound, the new record still contains an eclectic mix, shifting on track to track from gospel, to nursery rhymes, to more straight indie rock numbers. “It’s still a Shivering Timbers record, which I feel is all over the map as far as genre,” Sarah said. “It’s hard to pinpoint any one influence because me, Jayson and Brad all listen to so many different types of music. It all kind of gets blended in there somehow.” Jayson added: “This one is more rock ‘n’ roll. A full band sound, focused on guitar, vocals, bass, drum. And then we put little things here and there, whereas the first record had a lot of different sounds. This is more focused, for sure.” The group is currently making plans for a fall tour of Ohio and the surrounding region, and is working on a scheduling a winter tour with Pat Sweany, with whom it has shared the bill before. “It was awesome when we played with him,” Sarah said. “Our fans loved him, and his fans loved us. It was like this mutual badassness. So we’re looking forward to doing it again.” The Shivering Timbers will be performing Aug. 17 in Mason, Ohio, and Aug. 31 the group will debut its new record at Akron’s Musica with the White Pines, Good Morning Valentine and Light of the Loon.