The Lucksmiths' Warmer Corners is chock-a-block full of sweet pop songs about longing and loathing, loving and licking, learning and leaving. A band of Australian natives, the twelve tracks on this their fifth full-length present a band rooted in authentic witty-pop/poppy-wit sensibilities, who pull off sounding personal and real enough to be your best friend's older brother's band, even with an instrumentation more common to radio-hit, single-happy, major-label, extremely-pretty MTVers.

The latest effort continues to blend Belle and Sebastian, the Smiths and Jonathan Richman — in terms of structure and lyrics — not just some ambiguous idea of "this sounds like". See track four, "Now I'm Even Further Away," for example:

"My one desire is that beautiful sound / The sound of your voice / Tickling inside my mind now."

Nice, isn't it? Now take track six, "Sunlight in a Jar":

"I tried to write an opera for us, but I didn't get that far, 'cause trying to sum you up in song's like catching sunlight in a jar."

Even nicer, isn't it?

The Lucksmiths' biggest accomplishement with this record is that there simply is nothing wrong with it. Their gloriously-sweet and accessible melodies, their swing-strumming clean electric guitars -- and even sometimes those usually-deadly string and horn orchestrations -- leave the listener with an overwhelming sense of happiness and contentedness. The Lucksmiths, simply put, have a strong, confident command of what a "good pop song" should be. And on Warmer Corners they give us a bucket full of twelve very good songs.