The Fratellis won't change your life or any of your top-five lists. What the band will do, however, is give you a few good tunes to throw onto a Saturday night playlist while you wait for the real thing to come along.

The fact that this debut hews closer to the Noel we know certainly shouldn't be a disappointment.

More often than not, they miss, retreating back instead of charging forward.

Better Luck Next Life, their second full-length, does lapse out of recalcitrance, but its immersion makes for a worthy distraction.

Thistled Spring, more nuanced and poised than its much-lauded predecessor, signals the ongoing work of a band far from finished, far from plumbing the depths of which it is capable.

Naturally there some moments where having too producers and visions hurts them, but for the most part, the band sticks to the formula that's worked in the past.

The songs on Goodnight Unknown are well crafted and it’s clear that Barlow still has quite a bit of passion for making music, but the spark of genuine creativity is not there.

Some of the better songs on Dreams and Nightmares--"In God We Trust" and "Believe It" being prominent examples--are the ones that let Meek hit the track hard and tear it apart.... But ultimately songs like these are in the minority on Dreams and Nightmares. There are many notable stylistic missteps.