THEY rarely gig and live hundreds of miles apart - yet There Will Be Fireworks, have made one of Scottish music's best albums this year.

The Dark, Dark Bright is a ambitious record steeped in Glasgow, with singer Nicky McManus writing the record while living near Glasgow Harbour.

It comes four years after the group released its well-received self-titled debut, packed full of stirring indie rock.

"The album was mostly written here and I've lived most of my life here, so it was a major influence and inspiration," explains Nicky.

"I hope it's not a parochial thing about Glasgow but one that's inspired by the city, so that people from other places can hopefully get the themes in it as well.

"We'd written maybe three songs and it was a perfect time to take stock, and you realise there's a thread there with Glasgow, and how the place forms identity is part of that.

"There's specific locations in there, but it's more about how the city is an inherent part of your identity and how that affects your outlook."

Now the band will launch the album with a gig at SWG3 tonight, before it's officially released on Monday.

Gigs by the group have become an increasingly rare sight over the past few years, with the jobs of the band - guitarist Gibran Farrah, bassist David Madden, pianist Stuart Dobbie and drummer Adam Ketterer - causing them to focus on that, and leave the band firmly as a hobby.

It means they've concentrated more on the album than gigging around.

"We've never gigged regularly and other than the period where we were recording the first album we've never practiced regularly either or written regularly," explains Nicky.

"We don't think of ourselves as a normal band, it's more like working on a specific project, whether a gig or an album, and we focus on that.

"Now it's terrifying because we have these gigs and the album coming up, and we still have songs we've never played together live."

It's a level-headed attitude that isn't often found among young bands.

"This couldn't be further from a career," adds Nicky.

"We do this for the fun of doing it - we've known each other for years and years, so it's a friendship thing, and being in the studio and working on songs is something we love…

"We're ambitious about the music we do, and making it as good as we can, but that's it."

That ambition carries over into The Dark, Dark Bright, a record that features epic guitar anthems, plaintive piano-led tunes and spoken-word interludes.

For Nicky, who's a lawyer by day, making an album is a creative high that tops anything else, even gigs.

"When we play gigs we love the rush of it, that's great and we've been able to meet really cool bands through doing it, but our main focus has always been on the recorded product," he says.

"The album is still the pinnacle of what a band can offer, a long player of 45 minutes is where you set out your stall and really express what you want to express."

While their debut record was praised and gained the fivesome a cult following, Nicky believes their sophomore effort has raised the bar, showing a band in far more confident form.

"We recorded it at Old Mill Studio in Strathaven, and the guy who runs it, Marshall Craigmyle, is a genius and a friend.

"Knowing him, and knowing the set-up meant that we were a lot more confident, and we knew how to describe what we wanted this time, whereas before we'd give terrible descriptions about what we were looking for.

"The first one we recorded live and then overdubbed vocals, it was lo-fi and we bashed it out quickly.

"This time we were more obsessive about how it sounded, so we were experimenting and trying to mould the sound a lot more than we had previously."

Despite some nerves, the SWG3 appearance is something the singer is looking forward to.

"The main emotion now is absolute fear as we're still sorting out who's playing what," he chuckles.

"But I'm really looking forward to it, we have a really good line-up too."

While the band are a clear-headed bunch, Nicky does admit he'd be tempted to turn his music into a career by a certain offer…

"If someone offered us £10million to record in LA, I dare say we'd be tempted to have a go at it as a career."

n There Will Be Fireworks, SWG3, tonight, £8, 7.30pm. The Dark, Dark Bright can be ordered from cometsandcartwheels.com