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(...)

As for Beck, he is in fine form, gauchely approaching me with hand outstretched, his enormous blue eyes, rosy cheeks and slight, boyish frame belying the fact that he turned 32 in July. "I'll be going through puberty next," he laughs.

(...)

You might have expected Beck to be in a sour mood. His new LP, Sea Change, marks such a dramatic shift away from the boisterous party vibe of 1999's Midnite Vultures that the Face recently ran an open letter to him, asking: "Er, everything OK, dude?" Meanwhile, Rolling Stone, in a glowing five-star review, compared Sea Change - his ninth studio album - to Blood on the Tracks, Bob Dylan's painful 1975 account of a ruined marriage.

With titles like Lonesome Tears, Lost Cause and Already Dead, and lines such as "These days I barely get by/I don't even try", Sea Change appears to be mourning the end of Beck's nine-year relationship with Leigh Limon, of whom he once said: "She chose me when I was penniless and unknown, and that makes her about the most important person in my life."

(...) "I don't talk too much about my personal life," he says by way of a warning shot. He must realise people will wonder about the circumstances that led him to write such personal songs? "Sure," he says. "But you'll get a thousand times more of me from my music than anything I could say in an interview. When you start opening yourself up in that way, it cheapens your life."

Is he repulsed by the cult of celebrity and the impulse to confess? "I'm not repulsed. It's just not a game that I ever wanted to play. I've never been a peacock about it."

It's a strange assertion coming from this extrovert performer, who, only a couple of years back, could be witnessed sliding across the world's stages on his knees like a freshman James Brown, albeit with tongue firmly in cheek.

(...)

But Beck never succumbed to the lure of rock'n'roll degeneracy, generally avoiding both the gossip columns and the gutter. It's a position he shares with Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips, who are due to support Beck and be his backing band when he tours the US this autumn. From a young age, Coyne and Hansen were immersed in the "alternative" lifestyle, and so had no problem leaving it behind. "I'm not from the suburbs, you know. I grew up with 14-year-old crackheads," Beck says with disarming nonchalance. "I see bands partying as intensely as possible, and it's really not that romantic to me."

When VH1 ran a Behind the Music story on Beck, the narrative arc didn't fit the template of "overnight success followed by degradation and despair with redemptive coda" that is a staple of the programme. "It wasn't much of a sleaze thing," he says of the documentary. "But I don't think tawdriness defines an interesting life. I've had some amazing experiences, I've travelled the world, and there is, of course, an inescapable Spinal Tap-ness to any musician's existence. But rock'n'roll debauchery is not really interesting to me."

(...)

But the plaudits didn't go to his head. "It just seemed absurd to me," he shrugs, dismissing the accolades as "like billboards passing in the rear-view mirror". "I didn't have a chance to think about them. I was working so much, while factoring in my desire to stay alive creatively. I couldn't take any of it seriously. If there was any acknowledgment, it was for hard work and because I believe in music; I'm a champion of music.

"To me, the coolest people are the ones who pay no attention to being cool. They're just being themselves in an uninhibited fashion, willing to expose even the most ridiculous aspects of themselves."

Which brings us back to the new album, in which the master of disguise exposes his true self at last. Or rather, he assumes another guise, that of the tortured artist. But is it a guise? Do the sad and slow songs of resignation and regret on Sea Change represent any more or less of a genre exercise than the synth-funk of Midnite Vultures? Did Leigh Limon really break his heart? Will the real Beck please stand up?

"I don't think I would bother to make a record like this if it wasn't, you know, ripped from the soul or whatever," he says. Hasn't he just removed one mask to reveal another? "I don't think of them as masks; I just think of them as differentaspects of human experience. Everybody has different aspects to them. I think this record represents a good part of me. (...)

"But it's a cliche to think that the quiet, melancholy side of somebody is more the real them. It's just another side of them. It's an interesting question: are we more ourselves when we're happy or are we more ourselves when we're sad? We all have a bit of both. People are fluid. We ride up and down these emotions all the time. That's the human experience.

"But, you know," he adds, a smile creeping across his face, "I like to fake people out as well."