If you're going to attempt to produce your dreaded sophomore album within a year of releasing your first, it can't hurt to have help in big places.

The Thrills [ tickets ]--the Irish band that so sweetly channeled California beach life into their successful debut, last year's "So Much for the City"--could probably make a strong second effort on their own. But with help from the likes of REM's Peter Buck and legendary Beach Boys' song-crafter Van Dyke Parks, their new album, "Let's Bottle Bohemia," advances the band's light, folk-rock sound into something deeper and more satisfying.

Thanks to the band performing close to 200 shows in the span of just months, here they seem more experienced, infusing more talk of sex and road weariness. While the biggest issues dealt with in the first album's lyrics were breakups and falling out with friends, here songwriter and lead singer Conor Deasy confronts fame ("You Can't Fool Old Friends with Limousines," and the hipster-y, "What Ever Happened to Corey Haim?"), and gets tougher, with lines like, "It's not like I said that I love you," and, "I can smell your Catholic shame."

But for a sound that the band says is getting "darker," the disco-y strings, harmonized background "ooh oohs" and happy keyboard creations that show up everywhere here still bring the immediate smiles and head-bobbing the last album did. You can only hope that their imminent increased success won't dim this brightness in their albums-to-be.