The bar was set pretty darn high for Ball Park Music to follow up the intensely likeable, playful and intellectual surprise hit, 2011's Happiness And Surrounding Suburbs. While Museum won't rocket to the same dizzying heights for some fans, rest assured there's no second album syndrome here. The cute, kitsch and punchy pop-rock isn't employed as much to steal the limelight, replaced more so with a move towards a more mature and varying sound but with the same introspective and jaded banter from frontman Sam Cromack that made their first album so very memorable.

Much-vaunted single and opening track Fence Sitter is a clear move towards this more polished, less blingy approach. The playful Ball Park keys are still piping crisp lines, but there's a downward progression with ferocious guitar lines and Jen Boyce's climbing bass interrupting sonic bursts of synths, while Sam's vocals harmonise poignantly with Jen's in the minor shifts. Other singles Surrender and Pot Of Gold recall former ways, anthemic and inclusively despairing in their approach, no doubt making them live favourites. Elsewhere, Cromack digs deeper on the bucketload of thoughtful tracks that act like little grace notes between the onslaught, cracking and trilling on the downbeat Cry With One Eye and almost howling on High Court, riddled with juxtaposing sparkly keys. Harbour Of Lame Ducks is a near-end highlight, Cromack channelling Thom Yorke for a simple-but-sweet croon over light guitar strums, adding some much needed shade against the flooding light.

Museum provides the same captivating, funny, rejoicing and despairing streams of thought offered up by Ball Park Music's debut but with more stock taken, and is ultimately a confident step in an assured direction.