The Thrills are trying to shake off their trademark summery sound in a bid to recapture the spectacular success of their debut album, writes Brian Boyd.

There's an illuminating moment in the new Thrills DVD when the Dublin band are waiting expectantly to hear how their second album has fared in the charts after its first week of sales. The band had good reason to hope that it would debut at number one, given that their first album, So Much For The City(2003), had been a huge international hit, selling more than a million copies and all concerned were convinced that the second album was an even stronger work.

When the news comes in that the album, Let's Bottle Bohemia, had only reached number nine in the UK album charts, there is a dramatic change. The mood is one of disappointment verging on anger - there is a real sense that the Thrills express train has if not derailed, then stalled. The album did stall at number nine before making a swift exit from the charts and is now regarded, commercially at least, as an "under-performer".

There is more to that particular moment, though. The idea with the DVD (directed by the acclaimed Daniel O'Connor) was to put it in the shops to coincide with the release of the band's third album. But because of the disappointing sales of Bohemia, there was a nervy approach to the third album. The Thrills ended up going over budget and over deadline and missed the original release date by a good few months as they took time to get bigger and better songs for the album. A certain momentum was lost, schedules were torn up and now the DVD (which is an excellent account of the rock group's beginnings and rise to fame) is going to be released as a bonus disc for people who buy the "special edition" of the band's new album, Teenager.

"That particular moment on the DVD was embarrassing for us to watch back," says lead singer and songwriter Conor Deasy. "The DVD was always going to be about our highs and lows but until then it had all really been highs, so when it happened it was terrible in that moment. We all felt a bit down that after coming off a very successful first record, the second one didn't quite go to plan."

While Bohemiamay only have sold a rough 30 per cent of the sales of its predecessor, Deasy vigorously defends its worth. "We all think it's a better album," he says. "And it's not just us, fans of the band think the same way too. The problem, I think, for most people, is that it appeared just a year after the first one and that's never really done in the rock world. People thought it had been cobbled together. I'm still convinced that if people had lived with it a bit, they would have come round to my point of view. But the big thing was it didn't have the immediate hit singles that we enjoyed with the first. And these days the hit single is all important - I mean, look what one hit single did for Snow Patrol.

"But look it at this way: on the back of Bohemiawe got to play Live 8, we played Phoenix Park, we toured with U2 and REM and the most played song on BBC Radio in 2004 was from that album - Corey Haim. So we have to get some perspective on this."

Largely from the Blackrock area of Dublin, and with a musical style that has nothing in common with any Irish band before them or since, The Thrills were a real anomaly when they broke through in 2003. There was nothing in their music that linked them to where they came from and instead of being influenced by the usual suspects, they seemed to be turning their ear more to Burt Bacharach and Brian Wilson.

'Sun-drenched' was the almost obligatory term used to describe their up-tempo, harmony-enriched sound. "You get sort of tired of the same words used to describe your records," says Deasy. "The first two albums have been recorded in Los Angeles [the band's spiritual home] and the first thing we decided was we were definitely not going to record this one there. We know a lot of people there so for five young men in a band it's not an ideal working environment. REM had suggested a studio in Vancouver to us and after a bit of resistance to the idea, we finally went there, thinking at least we wouldn't know anybody and there wouldn't be any distractions."

It probably subconsciously registered with them that Vancouver is one of the rainiest cites on the American continent - the ideal backdrop for a band intent on escaping their "summery sound".

"It turned out that there was a heat wave all the time we were there and the only day it rained was when we were on our way to the airport to come home," says Deasy. The weather wasn't their only problem: they found themselves working at a slower pace and there was a sort of unspoken acknowledgement among band members that, for the first time in their highly successful career, their backs were ever so slightly tilting towards the wall.

"We finished the album in Vancouver but still weren't happy," he says. "That's why we missed the deadline, but as it turned out the new songs we added on turned out to be some of the best on the album." A real case in point here is the album's opening track, The Midnight Choir(the last song written for the album), which is arguably the strongest track on the record.

Elsewhere, there's a real broadening of musical horizons. Should've Known Betteris a full-on country rock song that simply wouldn't have worked on past Thrills albums. "I like that song because a lot of our stuff is quite rich with quite a lot of things going on but on that song we restricted ourselves to a modest musical idea and held ourselves back," says Deasy.

Even the cover art-work of Teenagerspeaks volumes about how much the band want to move away from their past - it's a stark black and white photograph of a teenager's bedroom taken in the early 1980s. "It's an archive photo," he says. "And the moment we saw it, we knew it said an awful lot for us as a band and what we're now trying to do."

Given that So Much For The Citywas released in 2003 and Bohemia in 2004, Teenagersees The Thrills re-entering a music world that is much changed since they were last fighting for a chart position. "The one change that is bigger than the others is that these days, the real big sellers in music come from either brand new bands or the dinosaur bands," he says. "We're in neither category so for us, and considering the gap since the last one, this really feels like our debut album."

Teenageris released on Virgin/EMI. www.thethrills.com