This is YACHT’s second album as a two-piece and theyre first foray into starry 80s electronic disco – is that a thing? YACHT makes it feel like a thing. The other thing is the album’s concept, established immediately with ‘Utopia’ – the breathless pursuit of paradise that ultimately can only take place within the self. To be fair, some of these themes were covered back when YACHT was still Jona Bechtolt’s solo baby, and when calling Jona Bechtolt “the guy from The Blow” was still vaguely relevant. 2007’s elastic-fantastic I Believe in You, Your Magic Is Real converted platitudes about consumerism and self-esteem into a super-fuel, on which Bechtolt flung himself around, projected trippy slideshows and generally put on the most exhilarating, joy-filled shows your town had seen in years.

If the reader detects a note of wistfulness in this description then the reader has unique powers of perception and should duly note this on their CV. Okay, so YACHT’s commitment to the “feel” of Shangri-La is flawless. Claire L. Evans’s vocals are haughty, clipped and astonished, at the intersection of David Byrne, Deborah Harry and riot grrrl; bassy synths marry curt little electric guitar riffs at just the right level of funk. And this configuration does create a few pockets of awesomeness. There’s the driving, clamouring cowbell beat of ‘Utopia’; the clockwork strut of ‘One Step’; and the glorious crescendo of ‘Paradise Engineering’, which stands on the shoulders of an enormous bass-line and attempts to hug the horizon. “Hello my brothers and sisters,” Evans shouts. “I’m here to tell you that the world’s last unpleasant experience will be a precisely datable event / yes / it will happen in our lifetimes / if we commit all of our energy today to the task of paradise engineering!”

I suppose the bitterness began when YACHT’s merch tables began to sport free leaflets explaining the semiotics of the triangle. Or when their website started to define them as a “Band, Belief System, and Business”. Or when they started to wear sunglasses indoors. As mentioned, though Bechtolt is up there with Andrew W.K. and the other greats of the Create + Party philosophical canon, his message has lost its dorky sincerity and lies now in the murkier region of art-school irony. Shangri-La is a meticulously put-together, undeniably danceable record. But if the Party PhDs were to plot the last three albums on a graph of Fun vs. Time, it would arguably reveal a steady yet disturbing decline in Fun since 2007. It is obvious that YACHT care a lot about your having a swell time: they just don’t currently represent the all-out, arms-out, pants-on-your-head kind of swell time they used to. But no worries: it’s all part of the band’s constant evolution, and all’s fair in the quest for utopia utopia utopia UTOPIA!