21.06.19

Hot Chip have always dealt in heartstring-tugging club music, halcyonic records made for pining over your ex in a rave. For their first album since 2015’s Why Make Sense?, A Bath Full of Ecstasy is all the better for not straying far from that territory, another gem from one of synth pop’s most solid acts.

Judging the album by its cover, created by Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller and Fraser Muggeridge, you’d be forgiven for thinking A Bath Full of Ecstasy was either a psychedelic self-help book or a motivational fridge magnet for eccentric parents. It’s nothing of the sort. Clear Blue Skies is Hot Chip by way of ELO, a near seven-minute long dreamscape that could be the unofficial score to a chamber induced natural high.

Positive, the album’s blissful peak, gargles with glitching guitars and Vangelis-like resonance. “I only want to be an echo of your beauty,” sings Alexis Taylor on Echo, his characteristically high-pitched vocal still defying time given the band are now firmly middle-aged. In fact, the whole LP is a melancholic ode to existential dread: a dedication to dancing when you’re too old to stay out past 2am, or the bliss of waking up on a Sunday not regretting the night before.

Jack Needham