When R.E.M.’s 1998 album Up, their first without drummer Bill Berry, was met with mixed reviews, Michael Stipe said this in an interview: “If this record dropped out of the sky by a three-piece band that nobody had heard of, people would be in the street shouting at the top of their lungs, naked, about it.”

He was being overly defensive, but I could see his point. Established bands — especially great ones — are always measured against their own legacy, their finest moments.

And beyond that, even excellent new work from a band that has been around for awhile won’t be met with the same enthusiasm or interest as the hot new thing. That phenomenon certainly isn’t unique to music.

I remembered Stipe’s quote when listening to Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance, the latest album by Scottish indie stalwarts Belle & Sebastian. After weeding through the songs and albums that received critical acclaim on the Village Voice poll, I can’t help but think that if this was a debut album, it would be topping this year’s versions of those lists.

But I bet this album will be largely forgotten by critics a year from now. And that’s a shame, because it’s a stellar addition to the band’s already formidable discography.

Fitting given the title, this could be called Belle & Sebastian’s dance album. It contains more synths than strings, and more attention is paid to the rhythm section than the horn section. A couple of tracks are a slight remix away from club-ready.

But in typical B&S fashion, even those tracks are off-kilter and delicate. And the rest of the album hews pretty close to the tried and true formula they’ve perfected over nearly two decades. The production is more assured, the tempos a little faster, but there’s no mistaking the responsible party.

Two tracks here are early candidates for next year’s list of best songs. Opening track ‘Nobody’s Empire’ is a stirring look at lead singer/songwriter Stuart Murdoch’s years-long struggle with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (which might explain his sleepy vocals on those early discs). It’s the most personal song he’s ever recorded, and it’s a great one.

Even better is ‘Play For Today,’ a 7 1/2-minute epic on which Murdoch trades vocals with Dee Dee Penny over a surreal mixture of lovely sounds I’d alternately describe as Caribbean, African and new wave. The pair deliver two of the best vocal performances I’ve heard on a Belle & Sebastian record.

Today’s SOTD, ‘Ever Had a Little Faith?,’ was written by Murdoch before he even formed the band, under the heavy influence of The Velvet Underground. The band recorded it shortly after Lou Reed’s death.