Effortlessly upending the cliché that second albums should be torturously-rendered creations filled with self-doubt and much head-scratching for the musicians involved, The View absolutely breeze in with the follow-up to their platinum, straight-in-at-number-one 2007 debut Hats Off To The Buskers.

Part-written on the road, part-realised in inspired bursts of creativity in the studio, it's an eclectic and often surprising affair that the Dundee foursome - Kyle Falconer (vocals/guitar), Kieren Webster (vocals/bass), Pete Reilly (lead guitar) and Steve Morrison (drums) - have proudly titled Which Bitch?

From playful opener Typical Time 2 - a nifty segue from the closing track of Hats Off To The Buskers - featuring Falconer delivering a road-bound message to his girlfriend while performing a one-man-band routine on piano, guitar and mouth-organ ("Kyle plays the lot," says Webster), through the rowdy schooldays recollections of 5 Rebbeccas, to the orchestrated sea shanty of Distant Dubloon, it's an assured 14-song collection that retains The View's rough-edged charms while opening out their sound in new and unexpected ways.

Here there are songs about being drunk and forced to follow road markings to find your way home (Double Yellow Line). Songs about being turfed into an Aberdeen jail cell for spurious reasons (One Off Pretender). Songs about wrestling with your girlfriend over the duvet in a selfish attempt to wake her up and have a natter (Covers) and songs about post-pub street arguments with your other half (Glass Smash) and songs about being chased out of a brothel that you didn't realise was a brothel (Give Back The Sun).

Elsewhere, there is darker emotional territory explored - Unexpected being about the death of Falconer's father; Temptation Dice finding Webster dealing with the fact that the devil will find work for idle hands. "That's a song about how just cause you're bored," the bassist explains, "you ended up getting tempted."

If these 14 tracks are more ambitious than anything The View have produced before, then that was exactly - more or less - the intention.

"It's really ambitious," Falconer says, before adding, "though we didn't feel ambitious. We just went with the flow and it felt right. We never really pushed anything. The vibe of it was naturally ambitious. 'Cause we know the script, y'know. We believe in ourselves."

If the character and individuality of The View's music served to distance them from their "mortgage indie" peers last time around, Which Bitch? reinforces the point with no small amount of confidence. Impressively, almost half of the songs were written in the studio.

"We had some songs that we'd just been working on on the road," says Webster. "Then we came back and did some rehearsing in Dundee. But a lot of them came when we were actually recording in Wales."

"There were some that we wrote and recorded in the space of one or two hours," Falconer adds. "They were completely just done on the spot."

The album re-establishes The View's fruitful, if frequently unhinged association with producer Owen Morris. "He's just the man," enthuses Falconer. "He's like part of us. We just have such a good time. It's like nobody really gets us, we feel sometimes. And he gets us. In the sense that we can do whatever we want."

Pre-production for the album commenced at the beginning of the year (with the band moving in with Morris for a fortnight), before recording began in May at Monnow Valley in Wales. If the sessions for Hats Off To The Buskers were characterised by much drunken and chemical shenanigans, then if anything, the circumstances surrounding work on Which Bitch? were even more extreme.

"This one was a lot more mental," Falconer admits. "We got banned from Monmouth and everything. Owen super-glued a witch's hat to his head for six days. He thought he was the town crier one day, he was that drunk. He made us a big throne, attached to the wall, to record our vocals on 'cause he thinks it sounds better up high. He made it in the control room out of this bench that was worth about two grand. We got in a load of shite and we got kicked out after that."

But it is likely the sweeping orchestration of Distant Dubloon, scored by Oliver Kraus and recorded in New York, that will initially surprise listeners. Inspired by Morris and Falconer's heavy rotation of the work of 19th century Austrian composer Gustav Mahler while in the studio ('It's supposed to sound like death"), it features a cast of Dundee characters - not least infamous local gang the Hilltown Huns - reimagined as piratical figures. "It's sort of comparing Dundonians to these classic characters in Treasure Island," Falconer states. "It's just these stereotypes, chasing the dubloon."

And so Which Bitch? finds The View upping their game entirely and sailing off into uncharted waters, with only their enviable talents, pinballing humour and unashamed cheek to guide them. A surprising album? Not for some, maybe.

"I don't think it'll really surprise our fans," Kyle Falconer decides. "We've got a lot of loyal fans. I think they're expecting a lot from us... and I think this is gonna do the damage."

Read about The View on Wikipedia