Hard-Fi's Rich Archer found it almost too painful to include a song about his dead mother on their new album. Viv Hardwick reports

I'm very excited about the new album, " says 30-year-old Rich Archer of Hard-Fi. "It's been a long process - we started it last December, but after building our own studio and trying lots of things, here we are." The studio the singer speaks of is in the band's hometown, and was formerly a taxi-cab office. Stars Of CCTV was recorded there also, but this time around, the quartet, made up of Archer, guitarist Ross Phillips, bassist Kai Stephens and drummer Steve Kemp, rented the property next door too, knocked through and with the help of a builder friend, converted the unit into their very own recording space.

The resulting album is more mature than its predecessor, and while Stars Of CCTV was a snapshot of life in the suburbs, what it's like to be trapped in a small town, with the only escape being a Saturday night out, the new LP, Once Upon A Time In The West, takes a wider view of the nation. One song, Television, for example, slams the reality-TV-obsessed society.

The band were formed in Staines, the home of Ali G, in 2003, and released their first single, Tied Up Too Tight, in April, 2005. Debut album Stars Of CCTV followed a few months afterwards, and was duly nominated for that year's Mercury Prize. The record eventually lost out to Antony And The Johnsons after an initial split decision, but despite not scooping the award, HardFi's place as one of Britain's best bands was confirmed.

Other songs on the album, in particular Help Me Please, address the death of Rich's mother, who passed away the day before Stars Of CCTV was released.

"We haven't actually performed Help Me Please anywhere yet, apart from in the studio when we recorded it. That was difficult. I'd had the song knocking about for a while. My mum heard an early sketchy version of it and said she liked it, which made me think it would be no good for us, " he smiles affectionately.

"Not long after she died, I was told we needed to put a song on the Warchild charity album, so I played them Help Me Please that I'd rewritten. I mumbled the words when I played it, I didn't want people to hear them, but everyone thought it was amazing, " he says.

"I remember when my dad died a few years earlier and my mum wanted everyone to know what an amazing person he was, and how proud she was of him, so I suppose this is a similar thing, " he continues, with a slight tremble in his voice.

"My mum and dad had always stood by me and supported me, so now was supposed to be the payback time for them - after seeing all the hard times I'd gone through in music, the knockbacks and the failures, now was supposed to be the time for me to send them on holiday, to get their driveway paved, you know, to do all the little bits and pieces I'd planned doing for them to say thank you.

"The thing my mum would have loved most would be seeing the cuttings in the papers, and watching the things on the TV. It hurts even more that she's gone and didn't get to see all of that, but it's made me want to succeed even more now, and everything's become doubly important."

Prior to the reviews of the album appearing in the music press, the artwork, or apparent lack of it, was grabbing all the headlines.

The covers of current single Suburban Knights and the album are both adorned with slogans - 'Expensive Black And White Photo Of Band Not Available' and 'No Cover Art' respectively - rather than the conventional image or logo, and the reaction to the unveiling of the sleeves was mixed, to say the least.

"Basically, the record label came in to a meeting and talked about the artwork on the first album, " says Archer, referring to the award-winning sleeve of Stars Of CCTV. "They said they loved it, but what they really wanted for the next one was a picture of us on the front because apparently record shops and fans love that sort of thing, and that as everyone downloads music now, no one would see the cover anyway, " he says. "They then showed us some ideas, and we were told it had to look big and expensive to appeal to an American market. One of the ideas was a photo someone had mocked-up of us getting out of a helicopter in New York. It was just total bull.

"Do you want your bands to take chances, and try things and take risks, or do they want them to just keep their heads down and get on with the business of selling records?

"All the bands I love have had an opinion, so that's what we want to do. I couldn't be in a band that didn't."

Hard-Fi's second album Once Upon A Time In The West is released on Monday.