I held the door open for all three members of the Sanguine so they could get into the locked-down Memorial Union Building at the University of New Hampshire, and it didn't occur to me that they were the band I was supposed to be interviewing. They were too quiet, too polite, too unassuming and too young. I thought to myself, "No, this couldn't be a rock band." But that's not how The Sanguine see themselves, either.

"We were really reluctant to jump into the full rock band thing," says Shane O'Connor, The Sanguine's guitarist and singer/songwriter. "So many new rock bands are taken in by the idea that they can be really loud. But just because you're in someone's face doesn't make it interesting."

With their full-length debut, Bear, recently released, a batch of upcoming shows, and a side-project or two, things are looking up for O'Connor, bassist Barker Gee and drummer Andrew Maher. Not bad for a band that started as an inside joke.

"Originally, it was just me, a drum machine and a four-track recorder," explains O'Connor, who's majoring in production at Berklee College of Music in Boston. "I called it The Sanguine Orchestration System, like it was some ornate, wild thing. I thought it was pretty funny."

O'Connor, originally from Exeter, recruited his old friend Andrew Maher, who's a student at UNH, double-majoring in physics and philosophy (which means he will one day explain the ultimate mystery of the universe). The two began performing, with Maher playing drums and the occasional guitar or keyboard, and recorded The Virginity EP last summer before locking themselves in Maher's parents' attic for the month of January to record Bear.

What they came out with is cold and delicate. The album is a brooding, lo-fi adventure through a 20-something winter-worry-land. With the barest of bare-bones production, there's a fragile beauty in the way O'Connor and Maher lope through three-minute musings on the implications of geography and climate ("New England"), the problems of isolation and perception ("The Chemicals"), and the usual suspects of post-adolescent concerns.

"We'd really been trying to limit ourselves musically," says Maher. "We try to get as much sound with as little as possible; I just bought high-hats the other day. But we've been gradually adding more tools to our musical tool belt."

O'Connor laughs, slapping his ankle, which is crossed over his leg.

"Did you just say 'musical tool belt'?"

Maher begins to laugh shyly, ducking down, and Barker, leaning far back in his chair, takes a minute before he chuckles.

Barker, who goes to Berklee with O'Connor, only started playing with the band within the past few months. The morning of our interview, he is groggy, blaming it on the "like, 200 reduced-fat Chips Ahoy" cookies he'd eaten the night before after the Sanguine's show at ArtSpace in Gloucester. It was Barker's first time playing with the band in public.

"I didn't even have a bass till the day before the show," he says.

O'Connor, who talks about the band like he's discussing Plato's Forms, explains their musical goals.

"It's our intention to constantly be moving. We don't want to be tight; we want to be together."

I ask him to define "tight" and "together," and he thinks for a moment.

"Being together means that we all have the same idea as to where the music's going, as opposed to being tight, which is more of a technical proficiency, where the music is in the moment."

"We've changed our sound every six months or so," says Maher. "We sound a lot different now than we did on the album."

It would seem to be so, based on the band's performance on the WUNH show, "Playing With Knobs," this past Saturday. Bolstered by Barker's bass playing, the Sanguine boys felt free to rock out, almost like the "full-fledged death metal band" O'Connor joked about them being. But not really.

In addition to Bear, The Sanguine has been collaborating with Jason Andersen on a dual-release. Acting as Andersen's backing band, they recently finished his five-song portion, and plan to record their own five tracks, with Andersen contributing backing vocals and guitar, when Andersen returns from touring.

"We want to release it on vinyl," says O'Connor, with a smile that makes me feel like I'm missing out on some inside, music school joke.

"Yeah, on brown vinyl," says Barker.

Maher laughs, too, quietly.

The Sanguine will be playing at the Red Door, Monday, June 27, with Northern and Nate Doyle. For more show information, go to www.thesanguine.com. You can buy Bear at their shows or online at www.ramenfactoryrecords.com.