Louis Eliot smiles. It’s not every songwriter who can boast an apprenticeship in the greatest lost Brit-rock band of the Nineties, has been mobbed in Moscow’s Red Square and prompted scenes straight out of ‘A Hard Day’s Night'’ when his last band touched down in Seoul, but then with Louis, it comes naturally.

Where other singer-songwriters gripe about their lot in life, Louis sees it all as part of as one surrealist cavalcade - whether that means being photographed for Vogue alongside Justin Timberlake by Mario Testino or, as he is today, enjoying a mid-afternoon Guinness in Soho’s legendary boho-hang out The Colony. But then, as one of this country's greatest, and most under-rated songwriters, he’s allowed a rueful smile.

“I’ve never really planned things,” he laughs. “I'm pretty disorganised. But that’s how I like it. The nomadic lifestyle appeals to me.”

It's been quite a journey. Nonetheless, for those of us who have been following Louis’ progress for the last decade, his latest album brings with it an air of symmetry. From the narcotic highs of Kinky Machine (fore-runners to the Britpop revels) to the widescreen heartbreak of Rialto, Louis has catalogued the sleazier aspect of London nightlife with an accuracy reminiscent of Ray Davies at his most acerbic. If there’ve been some hiccups along the way, so be it, that's how it should be. The new album is called ‘The Long Way Round’ after all.

“I just knew I had to get out of town and make an album away from all the normal distractions - that whole thing of getting it together in the country like Traffic, or even The Waterboys, though maybe without the raggle-taggle mysticism! The environment you record in is so important, and I think the new album reflects that. Anyway I had a kind of epiphany. One morning I found myself sitting by a campfire as the sun came up with just fields all around, and I thought, ‘you know, there’s something in this.’”

For Louis the eternal conflict between town and country has long been raging. Having spent his childhood divided between a crumbling former monastery in the wilds of North Cornwall and the ‘Performance’-esque bohemianism of Ladbroke Grove, his musical awakening came early. If camping on pavements for Dylan tickets with his mum or running round festival sites provided the initial trigger, it was witnessing bitter-sweet songwriters like Elvis Costello, Lloyd Cole and The Smiths singing of the pitfalls of love and late nights on Top Of the Pops that made him see there was only one career option available to him.

Following some rudimentary guitar lessons from a former member of Hawkwind (!) and the obligatory stint at art school, Louis duly did the indecent thing and formed Kinky Machine. Brash, flash and unashamedly in love with early Who and T Rex, they blazed the trail for Britpop and lived out their Johnny Thunders fantasies, delivering tunes like ‘Supernatural Giver’ and ‘Shockaholic’ en route which will spool forever in indie discos worldwide.
Opting for a more celluloid vision for his next project, Rialto, Louis rapidly found himself selling hundreds of thousands of records almost everywhere but in the UK.

“It was odd, yeah. I guess the most bizarre incident of all was when we were in South Korea. The album had gone double platinum there and they’d put us up in the most expensive hotel possible. We were sitting in the bar drinking cocktails whilst this guy sat at the piano and sang songs like ‘Lady In Red’. It was very ‘Lost In Translation’. The next thing, he starts tinkling a familiar chord pattern, and it’s ‘Monday Morning 5.19’. We just couldn’t escape it.”

Seeking refuge after four years crammed with recording and touring schedules, hotel check-ins and air-miles updates, Louis headed to Los Angeles for a fortnight’s break. He ended up staying for three months.

“It all fell into place. I bumped into John Porter (Roxy Music/Smiths producer) and he suggested we do some recording. I just thought, why not? I did all the usual stuff: drove out to the Joshua Tree and stayed where Gram Parsons had slept, listened to a lot of country music . It was a whole new perspective. A lot of things happened and it didn’t work out, but as soon as I came back to England I knew I had to record those songs.”

Cue ‘The Long Way Round’. Recorded in Cornwall with low-key producer Tam Johstone (“he's very reclusive - a Brian Wilson type”), Louis set about creating a folkier, less metropolitan feel to his music. Reminiscent of everything from Neil Young’s ‘Harvest Moon’ to Becks’ ‘Sea Change’ to Elliot Smith at his most haunting, it is his most mature album by a stretch, and further proof of his gift for a timeless tune.

If ‘Warmth Of The Sun’ and the gorgeous blue-eyed soul of ‘She Is Moving On’ are proof that age and fatherhood have mellowed him (he has a six-month old baby daughter), then the scathing ‘Everybody Loves You When You’re Dead’ (key line: ‘Rich kids are born to hate the world/ That's why they steal their mothers’ pearls’) show the lessons learnt from Elvis Costello all those years ago still simmer beneath the surface. ‘Country Life’, meanwhile, suggests that though Louis has mellowed, his heart will never really leave the city.

“I don't think I could ever really do anything else,” he smiles, as the sun draws in through the windows and a night on the tiles beckons.  “And it isn’t a race, is it? Besides, the scenic route always tends to be more fun.”

When it sounds like this, unquestionably.  Over to you.

Interview by Paul Moody

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