IT IS NO surprise that Sophie Ellis-Bextor describes her new record in family terms.

After all, the very name of the album is Familia, and she worked in the studio with her new-born son by her side, so it’s a natural comparison for the singer to make when she discusses how her latest work fits in alongside 2014’s acclaimed Wanderlust.

“It’s like a birth running order to me,” she says, with a laugh. “Wanderlust was the first born, because it was the first album that was a departure from what had gone before. It was a bit more wistful and introspective, whereas this one is the extroverted second child that’s bolshy and prone to climbing up cupboards and all that kind of thing. All the colours have been turned up from a muted landscape to a really vibrant motif.”

Wanderlust wasn’t Sophie’s first album, of course. There was a late 90s stint with indie band Theaudience, while it’s now 16 years since she topped the charts with Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love), a collaboration with the DJ Spiller that denied Victoria Beckham top spot in a tussle the tabloids and music press couldn’t get enough of.

The hits then kept coming for Ellis-Bextor, usually sleek disco pop primed for dancefloors. Matters changed with Wanderlust, where she worked with the singer-songwriter Ed Harcourt, developed an interest in Eastern European folk and baroque music, and displayed a penchant for dark, atmospheric arrangements.

It was her biggest success in years, both critically and commercially, but for Familia she switched from the Eastern European palate to one influenced by Latin America, with lead single Come With Us sashaying back onto the dancefloor.

“Wanderlust had that very Eastern European feel, so there was a kneejerk reaction from me and Ed to flip that,” she explains.

“After Wanderlust was finished, he went to Cuba and I went to Mexico on holiday. I’d been there before and I absolutely love it, so maybe that went in too. I would say the Latin American feel is like a filter that we put on the end, though – it’s not there all the time on the album.

“Wanderlust has this Eastern European feel but when I listen to it it’s like a love letter home in a way, and that’s true of this as well. I think that’s because Ed and I write a lot about what home is and what makes you, and that’s why that is in there as well.”

That prompts the obvious follow-up question – what does make a home for you, Sophie?

“Family is a massive part of it, but I suppose you’re just affected by everything around you,” she replies. “There’s the environment, where you went on holiday, what you do for fun, and all of that goes into it as the keystones of what you can call on for inspirations and ideas. I love travelling too, and it’s amazing that even when you try and escape home, it really resonates when you’re abroad too.

“I was lucky that I started going abroad when I was little. I remember going to Kenya when I was about four, and I still remember how extraordinarily different things were to what I was used to. You start thinking about ‘what if I’d been born here’.

“It’s always the same feeling when you get off a plane to somewhere really bustling and you think ‘god, this is all happening here all the time’ and it makes you realise how teeny-tiny our individual lives are.”

Speaking of teeny-tiny, the recording process had a small guest on hand, too. Her newest son Jesse was in the studio this time around, having been born just 12 weeks previously.

“You want to have your little buddy in your arms all the time, and everybody in the band is a parent too, so there were loads of people I could give him to for a cuddle while I was singing,” she chuckles.

“I couldn’t have done the album if he wasn’t there with me, my brain couldn’t function without that! It was that or nothing would have been done.”

Ellis-Bextor is now a mum of four boys, ranging in age from 12 years to nine months. She grew up in a big family (famously, her mum is the former Blue Peter presenter Janet Ellis) and she is evidently enjoying motherly life, with an occasional cry or question from one of her kids audible in the background as we chat away.

Earlier this year the singer re-Tweeted Barack Obama’s comments about not pushing kids into gender segregated roles, which is something that the 37-year-old is trying to avoid doing with her children.

“We’re probably more clued up about gender identity that than at any other point in history,” she says.

“Yet with children we still have this weird thing of blue in one corner and pink in one corner, and all boys like dinosaurs and all girls like butterflies. As someone who’s raising children, and I’m pretty sure I’d feel the same about it regardless of the type of children I had, whether it was boys or girls, they’re just little people and trying to form their own identity.

“I find it baffling that we’re trying to set them on these little paths, and I find it totally at odds, and very old fashioned, when compared to how we are approaching other things. I know you can vote with your feet, and I’ll shop in the girl’s toys section if there’s something there they’re after, but it doesn’t make sense to me.

“Saying I’ve got four boys always gets ‘oh, you’ll have a football team’ or when I said I was having another baby ‘oh, you’ll be hoping it’s a girl this time’ – I know it’s small talk, like chatting about the weather, but it’s still strange. I just wanted four people.”

Calling the album Familia isn’t just regarding her immediate family, though. It’s also a reference to surrounding herself with close friends for the making of the album, with Ed Harcourt a principal figure again.

Ellis-Bextor and Harcourt first worked together on Wanderlust, and she refers to him at one point as being “infinitely more talented than I am”, which seems a harsh judgement on herself.

“I think that’s a good thing, in a way,” she explains.

“This will sound twee, but when my mum got together with my stepdad she said ‘you know you’re with the right person if you always think your other half is a better person than you are’ and I know what she means with that. I definitely have it with Richard (Jones, her husband) romantically, but I think you can have it with people you work with, too.

“If I could do some of the things the musicians in my band could do then I’d be printing T-shirts to tell everybody, but they just get on with it.”

Ellis-Bextor isn’t bad at a few things, either. As well as her pop music career and her family life she’s fitted in modelling and TV work and earlier this year she fronted a documentary about the effect of social media on fame, including copying Kim Kardashian’s selfie-laden Instagram account.

That marked a change for Ellis-Bextor, given that her own social media accounts are filled with more mundane pursuits, such as the extremely rock n’ roll hobby of jigsaw puzzles.

“I haven’t had time to do one recently, but I do find doing them can organise your thoughts. When you’re preoccupied with a task then your mind can wander and ideas can come to the surface – it’s like a walk or a shower, where your brain can freely wander without you having to force ideas.

“So it can be good for that, although there are times I’ll do a 1000 piece jigsaw and I’ll suddenly think ‘this entire venture is completely pointless!’ I used to feel that when I was playing Tetris – I was really into it and played it all the time, so maybe I’m just into tidying up games…”

Delightfully, she follows this thought by treating me to a quick vocal version of the Tetris theme tune down the phone, but there are no puzzles needing to be solved when it comes to what the singer is hoping the rest of the year brings.

“My baseline for every album is that it will give me the opportunity to make another one,” she says.

“So the lowest expectation is to just keep making records. It’s still only my sixth album so there’s still a novelty to it, but I’m happy with the record, so that makes it easier to be at peace with whatever happens.”

Familia is released on Friday September 2.