It's amazing to see what a few short years can do to a band. Eskimo Joe started out as a gimmicky band belting out mindless guitar-pop tunes like Sweater, that happened to be more catchy than a particularly virulent strain of malaria. Then, on their first full-length album, they suddenly morphed into a band that certainly had their pop smarts intact, but started making music that was a lot deeper, and a lot more satisfying.

Their second full-length, "A Song Is A City" continues the process of evolution for the band, moving from mindless disposable pop into a much more mature, fully realised sound. There's nothing as catchy as Sweater here, but the songs on the album have so much more substance, meaning they won't become irritating after six weeks like Sweater managed to.

The band dresses up their songs on this album with recurring themes of dreaming and sleeping, which give the music a cohesiveness that the band didn't quite manage on "Girl". "A Song Is A City" plays quite well as an album as opposed to a jumbled collection of songs, and this helps it along quite a lot.

The big surprise on this album however, is the dark themes and subject matter it explored. Frontman Kav Temperley is still a long way from slathering on pale makeup and belting out bad Joy Division knockoffs, but the album is a lot more sombre and serious than anything the band has put out before. Not that that means that there aren't some great pop rock moments on here - the band's pop hooks are just as strong and ever-present as ever, but the earnest lyrics mean that the band has something to offer over and above catchy melodies.

An excellent example of this new maturity can be found on Come Down, which plays like a Coldplay only better, or Smoke, which features Temperley contrasting his normal gruff delivery with some soaring falsetto. Closing track Car Crash is particularly impressive, with bleak vibes that still aren't quite hopeless.

"A Song Is A City" isn't perfect, you only need to take a look at some of the indulgent tracks like Carousel to see that the band haven't completely got the hang of how to put together a solid album. But all the same, it's one that shows the band growing a lot, and sounding pretty impressive while they do it.