Franz Ferdinand - Tonight: Franz Ferdinand

Rating:

* * *

Well, we kind of liked Franz Ferdinand's second album

You Could Have It So Much Better

at the time, which arrived just 18 months after their 2004 classic debut. But it sure didn't hang about the place like their first one did, feeling like a hasty B-side echo of the first.

This one's been a bit longer in the gestation. It comes complete with some worrying advance word that they had gone Afrobeat, a phrase becoming a rock running gag after similar missives about Coldplay's last one.

And more worryingly, that they were being produced by British pop hit factory Xenomania - a studio collaboration was soon abandoned due to musical differences.

So, left to their devices the Scottish quartet emerge sounding, well, a lot like Franz Ferdinand.

Yes, right from opening track and single

Ulysses

which entreats "let's get high" before its hooky la-la-la chorus, it seems like the the return of the art-schooled, aloof, libidinous, and pale-but-funky band of the first album.

Only this time they've got added synthesizers and lots of them. The seven-plus minutes of

Lucid Dreams

turns into an extended acid house squelch-fest, while

Bite Hard

comes with shades of Soft Cell and the languid

Live Alone

threatens to turn A-ha at any moment.

Unfortunately, despite all the extra keyboarding, too many of the songs here start to sound like version 2.0s of previous tracks.

Not that frontman Alex Kapranos has gone with the upgrade, his permanently arch delivery seems stuck in come-hither mode with lyrics which seem to be running out of the clever pick-up lines that worked so well back in the early days of

Take Me Out

.

Still, that doesn't stop

Tonight

having many an infectious disco-rocker.

That's whether it's

No You Girls

(in which Blur's

Girls and Boys

meets Prince's

Kiss

);

Send Him Away

with its slight, yes, Afrobeat guitar;

What She Came For

with its guitar fireworks ending; or

Can't Stop Feeling

with its heady groove.

Apparently, the songs are meant to frame A Night in the Life concept - something Bloc Party did on their last too. But any greater thematic depths remain elusive.

And while it's an album you wouldn't mind spending an evening on the tiles with, whether you would want to invite it to breakfast is quite another matter.

Russell Baillie