Starsailor´s eagerly awaited second album, ´Silence Is Easy´, is an album of revelation, both musically and personally. For the band, its writing and recording has reaffirmed their place in the world: their calling is to communicate emotionally through song, simple as that. For the rest of us, its revelatory kick is in the further unfolding of a mighty talent. There are even more sides to this diamond than their million-selling debut album, ´Love Is Here´, hinted at.

It took them a little while to get there, of course. When you´re thrust from a run-of-the mill life working in off-licenses, funeral homes and call-centres in Lancashire to selling a million albums in just a few short months, there´s bound to be a period of adjustment once the clamour quietens down. Principle songwriter, James Walsh, knew that when the touring ended in Spring 2002 the pressure would be on to at least match his first batch of songs. Could he do it? He wasn´t sure.

"We had a couple of songs ready for the new album at the end of the last tour," he says, "but there was a period when I wasn´t sure what was going to come next. There´s that bit after your first album when you think, ´we haven´t got any more songs!´." But we realised that we were doing something satisfying, we weren´t working in a factory or struggling to get a deal. We were in the band that we´d always wanted to be in and we just got on with it."

It was this realisation that spurred the group onto the album´s defining song, the title track ´Silence Is Easy´. The song is a great cathartic declaration: this is who I am, this is who we are. Soon songs of a similarly personal nature were piling up; songs informed by the birth of James´ daughter Niamh, songs about love and identity.

"The last album was written from the perspective of four people who had shit jobs and went to the same pub every week, so it was very aspirational. Now three of us have our own places, I have a baby, we´ve all been around the world and the songs draw on our experiences."

Another defining moment in the songwriting phase was when James delivered ´Music Was Saved´, a great tub-thumping, anthemic rallying call. "When I heard that" says bassist James Stelfox, "My head nearly came off! I thought, ´Right, this is special.´" The song itself is a love letter from Walsh to his chosen profession.

"´Music Was Saved´, and ´Bring My Love´ are about coming through the mire too. They´re about being knocked and coming out stronger for it. Music saved us all, the music that we listen to, the music that we make. It´s all about finding your identity. I love watching football but I was increasingly frustrated that I was rubbish at actually playing the game. Getting into music made me realise that I could do it myself and do it well. It was such a revelation. And the fact that we keep getting better is so exciting. You never stop learning or developing with music." This last statement rings truer with this album than most.

Once the songs had been written, the band were ready to hit the steepest learning curve of their short career: they were booked to enter the studio with Phil Spector for the legendary producer´s first engagement in two decades. How did the Chorley Four come to hook up with the architect of the famous Wall Of Sound?

James Stelfox takes up the story, "We met his daughter Nicole at one of our shows in LA and she said, ´my dad´s a really big fan, he loves ´Lullaby´´. So she invited us to his castle. First time we met him he was like, ´Okay, so we´re going to do the record in Abbey Road, my guy is going to engineer it, it´ll be great!´ We were a little surprised since it was the first we´d heard about it. But, you know, Phil Spector is Phil Spector."

Before long, Spector had spent a week in a London studio with the band, resulting in the recording of two new tracks, after which the band took three weeks off to continue writing. "After that we did another month," continues Stelfox. "But we´d come to the end of what we wanted to do with him."

James Walsh continues, "We always knew how we wanted the songs to sound and we thought it was disrespectful to say to Phil Spector, ´We want you to produce these two songs the way you want, be Phil Spector on them, and for the rest of the record sit around and press record.´ We felt we needed someone who was a great engineer to help mould our ideas, but Phil Spector has made his name as a hands-on producer which was great for the two tracks that he worked on, (´Silence Is Easy´ and ´White Dove´) but for the rest of the album we wanted it to be our vision. So, the band completed the remaining nine tracks with engineer Danton Supple as co-producer, although John Leckie was drafted in to work on the shimmering ´Shark Food´.

The results are astonishing. From the pulsing dance-rhythms of ´Four To The Floor´ to ´Fidelity´s´ soulful strum, ´Silence Is Easy´ steamrollers any preconceived ideas about Starsailor´s limitations. "The album is much more confident than the first one," says Walsh. "We were a lot more willing to push things and we had a clear idea of how all the songs should sound. I think that confidence is there for all to hear. With the first record you´re trying to make an impression, and to make people listen to you," he explains.

"I´m singing more comfortably this time. Doing a whole tour of ´Love Is Here´ was really hard on my voice. I´d been listening to loads of Jeff and Tim Buckley, that´s what I was aspiring to, but six months down the line I was living off honey and lemon. It was a revelation for me to listen to Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson. Dion, too, was a massive inspiration because he still sounds great and it always seems as if he´s singing with a smile on his face. I wanted a bit of that instead of having to hit a tortuous high note in every line."

James Stelfox puts it more succinctly. "He´s always had a great voice, but now I think he´s really becoming a great singer with it."

And if there´s a moral to this whole story, the story of ´Silence Is Easy´ it´s just that: this is an album about finding out who you are and where you fit in and about recognising what gifts you have. "The album is about finding your place in the world," says James Walsh. Starsailor have found theirs.