Band together; Exclusive REM and Oasis help Thrills get their pride back razz rocks.

Byline: By John Dingwall

THE Thrills burst on to the British music scene four years ago with So Much For The City, a debut album full of jangly pop songs inspired by the sunshine of America's west coast and name-checking towns such as Santa Cruz and Big Sur.

But their second album - Let's Bottle Bohemia, in 2004 - was dismissed as a rush job by some critics and the band suffered a crisis of confidence.

Now the Dublin five-piece are back and bursting with pride, having completed third album, Teenager.

For their comeback, they took REM's advice and headed to one of the most dangerous parts of Canada - where heroin addicts are commonplace - to lay down the new batch of tracks.

And frontman Conor Deasy believes that has reinvigorated the band's sound and given them back the self-belief they had been lacking.

He said: "It has been a while, but we really needed to go away for a bit. We knew that.

"Bands work at quite a slow pace so if an album comes out a year after your first one, people assume it has been rushed.

"Our second album maybe wasn't as cohesive as the first, but I feel some people didn't give it anything other than a quick listen and failed to get what it was about.

"Our confidence took a real kicking for a couple of months, but REM took us out on tour and they loved the new songs and were very supportive of the band.

"Then Oasis invited us to tour with them in Europe and we couldn't say no.

"We played Nothing Changes Around Here and when we came offstage Noel Gallagher told us: 'That's a great song and a great chorus' so things like that helped to lift us up. It prevented us from getting too down and we got through it in the end."

Explaining the band's decision to turn down the glamorous rock 'n' roll hedonism on tap in Los Angeles for a rundown district of Canada, he added: "This record had to be a departure for us.

"I wanted to move away from the aesthetic and iconography we had immersed ourselves in with our first two records. We knew Los Angeles well and it had been a distraction, so we tried to do the album in Dublin.

"We couldn't find a studio we wanted and made a cheeky call to U2 to see if we could use theirs, but they were working in it at the time.

"REM had suggested a studio in Vancouver. We didn't know anyone there and immersed ourselves in the recording of the album.

"We didn't go out. We were recording in Gastown, which is one of the most dangerous neighbourhoods in British Columbia.

"They have a liberal, progressive drug policy so it wasn't unusual to see homeless people hanging around outside the studio with syringes sticking out of their arms.

"There was actually a bin against the wall with the sign: 'Deposit your rigs here', rigs being street slang for syringes.

"So it was a very interesting place to record and an inspired suggestion from the REM guys."

Their friendship with the American group is a long standing one, developed after they played Seattle's Crocodile Cafe - which is owned by Peter Buck's wife - while they were still unknowns.

"We had played the Crocodile Cafe a few times," Conor recalls. "One day Peter came down to the venue, which was a really big deal for me.

"The very first gig I went to was at Dublin's Slane Castle with Oasis and REM on the bill. I was in the front row with 80,000 people crushing against me.

"We asked Peter to play mandolin on our second album.

"Then we toured for a month with them in Europe and became friends. When a band of REM's stature suggest a studio to you it is worth bearing in mind."

Teenager is released on July 23.

'Our confidence took a kicking but REM took us on tour and were very supportive'