East Coasters Two Hours Traffic maintain a positive outliook despite the mixed reception to their latest album, Territory.

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Writing good pop songs ain’t easy; just ask anyone who’s ever tried. Alec O’Hanley, guitarist, keyboardist, vocalist and co-leader of Maritime pop foursome Two Hours Traffic has been trying for a few years and has gotten pretty darn good at it. “I don’t really have a lot of experience writing anything else but pop songs, but it is really tough,” he admits. “You have to be very efficient. Everyone thinks it’s just verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, which can work, but there are lots of subtle tricks that go into the good tunes.’”

O’Hanley figures he’s about halfway towards the 10,000-hour mark that he needs to perfect his craft and he cites The Strokes as a prime example of a band that works really hard to achieve that tossed off, easy-peasy feel that the great pop tunes demand: “You do really have to put a ton of effort into make something sound effortless.”

O’Hanley and singer Liam Corcoran have been performing as Two Hours Traffic since they emerged as an acoustic duo while in high school, but it was in 2007 when their second full-length disc, Little Jabs, poked, prodded and grabbed attention from coast to coast. Little Jabs was on countless ’07 Top 10 lists, the Polaris Prize shortlist and won Best Pop Recording at the East Coast Music Awards. Suddenly, Two Hours Traffic was the little band that could and did.

According to O’Hanley, the band began as “sort of a glorified cover band,” but even then the duo aspired to higher ideals and grander realizations. The Radiohead and Coldplay covers gradually gave way to more originals as the band looked to expanding.

“It was hard to get shows as an acoustic duo,” he says. “We wanted to play bars and we realized that to compete with the partiers and the chatter, we’d have to get a whole lot louder.” With new members Andrew MacDonald (bass) and Derek Ellis (drums), Two Hours Traffic recorded The April Storm EP in 2003, which grabbed the ears of Joel Plaskett. The Halifax heavy-hitter produced the band’s eponymous full-length album and everything else, up to and including its latest, Territory, recorded in Halifax in just two weeks.

Territory exchanges some of Little Jabs’ bluster and bombast for more mid-tempo tunes and slightly less sunny themes that exhibit further growth in the band’s pop craftsmanship, thanks largely to Plaskett’s mentorship. “He’s got a good ear for a hook,” O’Hanley says. “He’s not shy about making arrangement suggestions or rhythmic suggestions or [saying] ‘Man, this part’s awesome. You should make it into a hook, sing it three times instead of one.’ He instilled that into us at an early phase and I think that’s infiltrated our own individual processes when we’re slogging away in our bedrooms.”

Still, after three records, there was some uncertainty as to whether the creative partnership with Plaskett had run its course. “It was a debate for us whether to go with Joel again,” O’Hanley acknowledges. “He was up front with us when we were discussing the possibilities of producing this record. He said he wouldn’t be offended if we didn’t opt for him but ultimately, it came down to ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it,’ I guess.”

Even still, he admits that the dynamic of the producer-producee relationship has shifted somewhat. “The relationship was initially more one-sided than it is currently,” he says. “It’s more of a dialogue now; back-and-forth on every point, every tone, every tune, every note, almost. It does make for a slower recording process, but I think ultimately it’s more representative of how we want the record to sound.”

While critics may not be totally falling over themselves to crown Territory the heir to Little Jabs’s promise, there’s no doubt in O’Hanley’s mind (and a lot of the band’s fans) that the best-before date is still a long way off. “I think it’s got some legs,” he says firmly. “I think we still have some fruits to be plucked from a tree that is overripe.”