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Making an album becomes more of a pressurized experience when the musicians have to foot the bill -- especially when a few want ads are involved. Hem's Dan Messe and Gary Laurer literally sold many of their possessions to pay for the group's debut album, "Rabbit Songs."

"It was an easy decision," Messe says "A pair of shoes or a couch or a record collection, they're all just temporary things."

Hem will play Saturday at the Club Cafe on the South Side.

The record they made is permanent -- and memorable. "Rabbit Songs" was touted as one of the best albums of 2002 in many year-end critic's lists, and it's easy to see -- and hear -- why: Simply put, there's never been anything exactly like "Rabbit Songs" in the pop music catalog. Using instruments including the cello, oboe, flute, piano, pedal steel guitars and clarinet, and wedding an orchestral sense of composition with songs that have folk, country and roots textures, Messe says he imagined the music in his head for years as a "mythical project that we would someday do."

Besides money, there was but one major component missing: a singer who could handle the elegant phrasings and subtexts of the simple-but-intricate lyrics.

Enter Sally Ellyson, who answered an ad Messe and Laurer placed in New York's Village Voice. Ellyson had never been in a band and didn't even have a demo tape she could send. Naturally, Messe and Laurer were skeptical -- until they heard her singing a lullaby ("Lord Blow Out the Moon," which is featured on "Rabbit Songs") she left on their answering machine.

"When I first heard Sally's voice, that's when all of these ideas became flesh and blood," Messe says. "After the voice was there, it was so clear what it was going to be in terms of the strings and woodwinds, and the songs as well."

Hem's music also has drawn many and diverse comparisons to various styles of music. Yet the heart of all the songs has a simple, underlying simplicity that connects with anyone who has every heard "Old King Cole" or "Mary Had a Little Lamb."

"The songs I write are mostly children's songs, in the simplicity of the lyric and the simplicity of the melody," Messe says, noting he often plays songs from the album to quiet his newborn son, Reuben. "Not necessarily the ideas behind them or the ways they're presented ... but you create something that is sort of archetypal, and consoling, too."

The idea of consolation initially seems odd, given that thematically, many of the songs touch upon the idea of separation and love lost: I held a silver dollar tight inside my fist and let you go from "Betting on Trains," and twelve bars to go/bottles of beer lined up in a row/one for each hour you didn't show in "When I Was Drinking."

But because almost everyone has had a broken heart, Messe thinks the sadness is leavened via shared experiences.

"And by creating something out of it, too," he says. "By taking these moments where you are absolutely heart-broken or just full of despair with no hope, and out of it, create something beautiful."

Which is exactly what Hem has done.

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