How would Hot Chip define their new compilation, Joy in Repetition? “We continue to be fairly self-deprecating. We haven’t had hits as such, so we wouldn’t want to call it Greatest Hits,” Alexis Taylor tells me over a video call from his home in London. “It’s just that we don’t have as many hits as some people… or any hits.” I correct him, noting that “Ready for the Floor” went to #6 in the UK in 2008. “Greatest Hit would be a short compilation.”
Taylor and Joe Goddard starting making music together in college in the late-’90s and formed Hot Chip somewhere around 2000 when they released their debut EP. Since then they turned Hot Chip into a proper band with the addition of Al Doyle, Felix Martin and Owen Clarke, and have had lots of “hits,” even if most didn’t make the main Top 40 charts, including “Over and Over,” “Boy From School,” “One Life Stand,” “I Feel Better,” “Flutes,” “Need You Now,” and more.
All of those songs and more are on Joy of Repetition, whose title comes from “Over and Over” (also a Prince song), as does the artwork, which features a toy monkey with a miniature cymbal. The artwork, by the way, was designed by Sir Peter Blake, who did the sleeve design for The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Taylor, who is friends with Blake’s daughter, just decided he’d ask. “He was immediately up for it and happened to own a toy monkey with miniature cymbals that he had had for years,” Taylor said. “We just thought, why not try a watercolor of that little monkey? It worked out well. It was fortuitous, but one of those things where it’s worth asking.”
I talked both Alexis and Joe over the course of 45 minutes or so, and other topics of conversation include putting a new song on a Best Of comp, releasing a Best Of in the streaming era, some of their favorite Greatest Hits albums, early help from LCD Soundsystem, technical difficulties at live shows, the impressive list of people who have played drums in Hot Chip, their upcoming dates in New York, LA and London, being part of Brian Eno’s upcoming ‘Together for Palestine’ Benefit at Wembley Arena, and more.
You can listen to our podcast interview in full below.
Hot Chip play NYC’s Webster Hall on Sunday, September 7 and Los Angeles’ Fonda Theatre on September 9.