A lexis Taylor’s morning has “not been without some stress”. Cradling a cup of tea in a London members’ club, conspicuously dressed in a bright purple jumper, rolled-up white jeans and enormous, clear-framed glasses, the Hot Chip frontman seems a little frazzled. It’s hardly surprising – his band are just a few days away from releasing their seventh album, A Bath Full of Ecstasy . Later this month, they’ll headline the Park Stage at Glastonbury , and after that, they’re playing their biggest ever UK show at Alexandra Palace . Even for a band who’ve been in the game for just under two decades, that’s bound to create some stress. But it turns out that’s not why he’s feeling this way.“My daughter’s school photos are today,” sighs the 39-year-old. “She tried to plan what she was going to wear, so there’d be no drama, and there was lots of drama. So she got in a real state, and was late to school.”From 15p €0.18 $0.18 USD 0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.It’s a rather mundane anecdote for the lead singer of one of the boldest, most idiosyncratic bands of the 21st century. But Taylor – who formed the five-piece in London in 2000 with his school friend Joe Goddard – isn’t one for putting on a false front. “We’re pretty down-to-earth people who look a bit less down-to-earth on stage,” he shrugs. “We’re quite reserved. But the music may not be.”It certainly isn’t. Hot Chip’s best songs – such as “Over and Over”, from 2006 album The Warning , “Ready for the Floor” from its 2008 follow-up Made in the Dark , and the title track from 2010’s One Life Stand – are snatches of earnest, exultant electro-pop. There’s melancholy, too, flickering beneath the chopped-up synths and weird, DIY beats – gilded with Taylor’s tender falsetto. For music fans of a certain age, the songs evoke a particular moment in time – the days of carefree, radiant raves in the mid-Noughties.“Yeah, nostalgia for the recent past,” says Al Doyle, the band’s guitarist and synth player (who’s also a member of American rock band LCD Soundsystem ), with just the gentlest hint of derision. “This is something that seems to be all-consuming for our particular generation. It’s one of those things you don’t want to go out of your way to gloss over, or to omit from the way you’re presenting yourself to the world. You could deliberately not play ‘Over and Over’. In LCD Soundsystem, for a few years we just didn’t play ‘Losing My Edge’. People were like, ‘Why?’ And we were like, ‘Well, because it just makes us upset’. But the way that Hot Chip dealt with that was to just change the way that we play the song quite radically, and that keeps it fresh for us, and allows us to remain proud of that stuff. But yes, it’s pretty weird to think that that song is knocking on the door of 13 years old, and seems to occupy a little bit of space in the pantheon.”Hot Chip aren’t interested in dwelling too much in that nostalgic space, though. Their beautiful new album A Bath Full of Ecstasy is evidence of that. Full of yearning, it never sits still, a synthesis of house, garage, soul and synth-pop. “Melody of Love”, the blissful lead single, is one of the best songs the band have produced in years, with just enough sadness – “I always seem to hesitate / Too little always comes too late” – that it could sit comfortable alongside Hot Chip’s bittersweet classics. “Hungry Child” is soulful, clubby escapism, and there is gentler fare in the form of the sweet, staticky “Why Is My Mind”.