When they say It’s Never Been Like That, they mean it. “This was about starting all over,” says Thomas Mars, Phoenix’s photogenic mouthpiece, stumbling across a cross fader in their Versailles studio, “it was about making ourselves scared again.” If there is precisely the kind of scrubbed-up freshness you might expect to hear on a particularly striking debut album to the four-strong Frenchmen’s third record, there is a reason for that. They attacked it as though they had never recorded together before. But there is no accounting for musical telepathy. Something gelled. It’s Never Been Like That? It’s never been sunnier, stronger, more coherent, thoughtful and alive.