Life couldn't get much better for the boys of Franz Ferdinand. With last year's buzz-magnet debut, these Scottish post-punk popsters vaulted past most of their competition to the top of the dance-rock charts. So it's only natural that this remarkably quick followup doesn't try to improve upon success.

You Could Have it So Much Better's 41 minutes are brimming over with more of what worked in the first place. More spiky, buzzy guitars nicked from the Gang of Four and Wire. More swaggering basslines and tensely groovy beats borrowed from The Stranglers and Joy Division. And more dark melodies and blackly humourous lyrics ("Kill me now") swiped from ... well, their first album.

Naturally, it's not quite as good the second time around -- more than a few of these 13 songs have the close-but-no-cigar sound of leftovers that didn't quite make the cut last year.

But at least one of them is a surprisingly satisfying mould-breaker: Eleanor Put Your Boots On, a charming slice of British Invasion pop that wouldn't have been out of place on an old Kinks LP.

If they keep heading in this direction, their next album could be so much better.

Track Listings:

1. Fallen
2. Do You Want to
3. This Boy
4. Walk Away
5. Evil and a Heathen
6. You're the Reason I'm Leaving
7. Eleanor Put Your Boots on
8. Well That Was Easy
9. What You Meant
10. I'm Your Villian
11. You Could Have It So Much Better
12. Fade Together
13. Outsiders