VINYL FORMAT. To write their new album, titled Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, Phoenix decamped to various locales away from their home studio in Versailles, searching for the stimulus necessary to transform the new material into a coherent LP. The results collected on Wolfgang demonstrate a kind of deliberate, considered approach, and in turn, they've created what is the best album in their already-amazing catalog. Featuring the band's signature melding of synthetics and organics, of sharp, danceable rhythms and intense guitars, of effortless melody with a considerable dose of aural panache, the album's ten songs are more layered than previous efforts. Highlights are the electro-tinged slow jam "Fences," the sweeping and mostly instrumental "Love Like a Sunset," and the spirited pop of lead-off track "Lisztomania."

A self-reflexive quality informs Wolfgang, as does Phoenix's sensibility - a nostalgic, vaguely melancholic vision of the way things ought to have been. The references are clear: The title of "1901," for instance, refers to year after the Exposition Universelle in Paris. The same can be said of the album's title - a blending of the classic and the upstart.