When they debuted with their eponymous first album earlier this year, Glasvegas were pretty likable and pretty ordinary - just annoying, rock-wise Scots down with MySpace, Alan McGee and teddy boy hair styles.

As a result, the band got famous and lost a drummer, but Glasvegas haven’t exactly taken their sound to new heights.

This six-track Christmas mini-album is high on depressing Christmas tunes about failed relationships, youthful alienation and such which draw on every indie rock device you could think of, including arena-size choruses and the same shimmering keyboard textures Franz Ferdinand used on their ‘mature’ record three years back.

When it works - as on the straight-ahead barnburner ‘Fuck You It’s Over’ and the echoing rendition of ‘Silent Night’ - the band’s expertise is certainly admirable. But melodrama drags down several cuts, including the painful early 90s-style lament ‘Please Come Back Home’, and in some form or another, you’ve heard all these songs before.

Chris Purnell