After being delayed owing to a bomb scare in Paris, and looking for all the world as if his corrupted-cherub countenance might either dissolve into tears or contort into a hissy fit at any moment, Ryan Adams settles down to be interviewed. His lower lip protruding petulantly, and with his band, the Cardinals, gathered around him like a security blanket, the 32-year-old slumps in his chair. Talk about body language. Advance information has it that he is off the booze now, and possibly the drugs, too, after years where his career seemed to be going to hell in a chauffeur-driven handcart. The man who once said of his debauchery, “I don’t see it as dark or destructive, I see it as boisterous”, should by rights be in a much better place, then. He looks anything but – “dark and destructive” pretty much sum up his demeanour today.

But talk he must, on this occasion to promote a new album, Easy Tiger, that at last reconnects his talent and abilities with the alt-country genius on display on his breakthrough 2000 solo album, Heartbreaker. When he released the more playing-to-the-mainstream Gold the following year, his early disciples howled “sellout”, while his record label surveyed the receipts with glinting, gimlet eyes. Subsequent albums have, for all their fitful magic, found Adams all over the place in terms of musical genres and quality control, and seemingly deliberately engaged in battles with both his label and his fans – and with all those expectations heaped on him after Heartbreaker. “For the last couple of years,” complained one critic during this period, “Ryan Adams has been caught in a trap of his own making”, demonstrating “a contrary intention to prove he was anything but the saviour of alt-country.” Reminded of this, Adams grimaces ominously.

“I wouldn’t go through the shit I’ve gone through,” he eventually answers, “in order to somehow be contrary, to go, ‘I’ll show these people.’ Who could be that way? I mean, most people can’t even be angry for an entire day, let alone for a year and a half.” (An implicit admission, surely, to at least 18 months of rage.) “But music can be a bit like a sitcom for some people, so I’m not surprised if some of them think, ‘Well, it’s disingenuous, because stylistically this album is different, or it’s a reaction to what went before.’ But I never felt like I owed anybody anything. I don’t ultimately owe even myself anything more than what I owe to the songs.”

He has a point, in the sense that what really matters is the music he produces. But it is also undeniably the case that, in the years when Adams’s creative output was as prolific as his intake of drink and drugs, when he got through managers, producers and girlfriends (the actors Winona Ryder and Parker Posey, and the musician Beth Orton, among others) with the same profligacy as he did albums and musical styles, his art suffered. As did his health: in 2004, he fell from the stage during a concert in Liverpool, doing a terrible injury to his wrist. As for his music, well, arguing over the relative merits of Demolition, Rock N Roll, Love Is Hell, Cold Roses, Jacksonville City Lights and 29 can be a diverting parlour game, but few fans would stake much on any of those albums when compared with Heartbreaker.

Probably nor would his record label, Lost Highway, with which Adams has had a notoriously fractious relationship. He once said of his upbringing in North Carolina, where he lived with his mother after his father left when he was nine: “There was skateboarding, vandalism, then you go inner. At least, I did.” Staying in for his music, but coming out, as it were, for his label and his fans has been a cross Adams has borne with particular difficulty. His dealings with Lost Highway seem at times to be like those between a child and a parent, the former alternately pleasing and alienating the latter. “I know what you mean,” Adams hollers suddenly when I suggest this. “You are mining the right vein, you’re going to hit gold, trust me.” Then he clams up again.

It might have been worse. He could, as he once did, have conducted the entire interview from beneath the covers of his hotel bed. And, amid the monosyllabic stonewalling, he offers occasional insights into the mess he undeniably made of things, and how he found a way out. “It has to do with business,” he says of his record contract. “And I understand that. I completely, totally, 100% agree with them. Records should make money. Why should I be different to any other artist?”

Later, he will contradict this, saying: “The way I see it is, there are people who think that I don’t deserve any special consideration, and that my talent does not exceed anyone else’s, that I should shut up like everyone else and colour within the lines – so that everyone can make more money.” Which sounds like a child wanting attention to me. “Look,” he continues, “I care about the work, not the end result. I’m still going to make this stuff, because it thrills me. I don’t need listeners or viewers to validate the experience. But I’m stoked that people are interested, because so am I.”

It is lovely last flourishes of artless arrogance like this that have contributed to a perception of Adams as up himself, as a spoilt, if amazingly talented, sulky chops who, if anything, needs a label that is far more demanding and interfering than his current one. But then you listen to Easy Tiger, to the soul-shredding beauty of tracks such as Off Broadway, Everybody Knows, The Sun Also Sets and, most of all, I Taught Myself How to Grow Old, and it all becomes understandable, if not forgivable.

Adams claims he actually went to Lost Highway before making Easy Tiger and said: “‘Let’s just streamline this. How can I best help you to get off my back?’ They could have said, ‘A disco record.’ Right band, right producer, anything’s possible.” Why does he think his authenticity, his artistic integrity, has been questioned in the past – perhaps because of statements like that? “How could I f***ing know?” he shouts. “Why do you think? I don’t know how movies are made, or if the actors mean it or not, but I know their effect on me. People playing music have a tough time keeping their sentiments out of it. It’s like when a comedian fails on stage, when the veil accidentally slips and some of the jokes get a little too real.”

After the demise of their relationship, Posey said of Adams: “He is a really talented musician, but he has a lot of personal demons.” You could say many things about Easy Tiger, but “an album where the sentiments have been kept out” is not one of them; the demons congregate and clamour. Adams went “inner” as a child. In some ways, he has advanced from those two states. In others, though, he is still right back where he started. I thought I knew what the phrase “inner child” meant. Then I met Ryan Adams.

Easy Tiger is released tomorrow on Lost Highway

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