The Thrills

Fans of Dublin outfit The Thrills and their chiming, Cali-centric debut So Much For The City should steel themselves for the sophomore followup, Let’s Bottle Bohemia (Virgin). The sound is a bit rockier, the mix more Guinness-thick, frontman Conor Deasy’s vocals more rakishly aggressive, and the lyrics as Hollywood-indicting as The Eagles’ Hotel California. “When we were writing our first album, all we wanted to do was get the hell out of Ireland,” recalls Deasy, during a pre-show chat in Sacramento, one of the last West Coast cities The Thrills had yet to conquer. Thanks to earlier sunny sonnets such as “Big Sur” and “Santa Cruz (You’re Not That Far),” the Celtic combo hit the mother lode in the Golden State via constant touring.

Now that he’s had time to reflect on it, Deasy sighs, he’s been having second thoughts. “On this record, I think we realized a lot of the things we appreciated about Irish culture, and maybe what it felt like to be Irish. In a strange way, by spending no time in Ireland over the past two years, we had a lot more respect for Ireland, a lot more to say about it.”