So what's new with the Silent Years, the winning local indie rock band that jumped onto the national scene with love from the likes of Spin Magazine and Pitchfork in 2007? Nothing much, really.

They're playing an afternoon show on Saturday at CAID for Detour's Rock City festival. Lead singer and songwriter Josh Epstein has been keeping things chill: married a girl (from Iceland), bought a house (local walkable burb), started a label (First Date Records). Oh, and did we mention he changed out his entire band? Yep, call it the Silent Years, Part Two. Eighteen months ago, soon after releasing an eponymous debut, the Silent Years basically called it quits. And then they were reborn into something even better.

But what happened when it seemed like big things were about to really, well, happen for the band?

"Just life," Epstein says. "Being in a band, it takes so long until you make money, a lot of people just kind of lost patience. I think that in order to stick with it, it has to truly be something that you believe strongly in and feel like it's what you're meant to do. If you don't feel that way then you're going to burn out after a couple of years."

It turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Conveniently, at the same time his lifelong buddies from the Silent Years, Part One were leaving for real life, fellow local band Rescue broke up. A couple of weeks later, Epstein made a phone call to ex-Rescuers Cassandra Verras and Mike Majewski, picked up the pieces and found that they fit together like a puzzle.

Now Epstein stands beside Verras (keyboards and violin), Majewski (bass), Ryan Clancy (drums), all formerly of Rescue, and Fabian Halabou (guitar), and he's unrepentantly happy about it. "I got a new perspective on everything when they joined because I had been an admirer of their work. So when it came time to write with them I thought it would be kind of a shame and stupid to not let them do their thing, which was why I liked them in the first place. ... So it was really more of a collaboration than it's ever been."

Verras is equally giddy about being in the Silent Years as Epstein is about having her and her ex-Rescue folk. "I don't think I could ask for four other people I'd rather be in a band with that I haven't already been in a band with, because I've been blessed with musicians in my life. We all get along and it's always fun. We're always laughing and joking in the van and hanging out. We're actually friends," she says. "In a lot of bands you don't see that."

After six months of playing shows together, the Silent Years went into the studio to record sophomore album, "The Globe," last August, now set for a U.S. release Aug. 12. Epstein explains the long gap between recording and release as a function of testing the label waters and finding them overly frigid when it came down to deal logistics. "We really didn't find anything that we were 100% comfortable with. So we decided to start the ball rolling ourselves and we were just going to put it out completely ourselves. ... There was a lot of work that went into that, in terms of planning just the logistics of how to run a label, how to start a business."

"The Globe" is something of a concept album, inspired by a Charles and Ray Eames short film called "Powers of Ten" that Epstein saw in science class as a kid. "It goes from this couple eating a picnic in Chicago and every 10 seconds the field of view expands by a power of 10," he says. "I started thinking about that movie again and ... I thought that the idea of space and the globe really kind of summarizes that idea because you're so close to everything, yet so far."

Armed with new musical blood and the technical skills of sometime Silent Years member Pat Michalak, the band cranks out a more mature, integrated sound that makes for a tremendous headphone record. Songs sparkle with well-placed handclaps, bells and Verras's violin, and at times just about everything but the kitchen sink.

"The World's Worst Birthday Gift" is a beautiful piece of rock, melody and shifting rhythms from the band, with Epstein turning in inspired vocals and a great hook despite the clunky title. The song gains an extra layer of meaning when Epstein explains the inspiration. "My grandma died of Alzheimer's this year and on her birthday she found out that she was never going to be able to eat again; pretty much on her birthday they put her in hospice," he says.

"That was the only song that was really personal but because we were in the middle of writing the record when that happened I felt like it really tied in. Alzheimer's seems to me to be a process of someone growing and maturing and learning and getting wise, and then their brain starts to deteriorate to the point that they revert back to a little child while they're still alive. It seemed to me it was part of a natural arc and was still topical."

And that arc? "Everything that happens to you throughout the journey of life is universal. So everything feels small or big and everything is small and big. And everything that's happening to you is happening to everyone and everything," says Epstein. "The process of being born and dying is happening to you, it's also happening to every star in the sky, it's happening to the universe, it's happening to everything."