HOWZAT

By the end of the summer, Pecknold was 30lb lighter. He says he’s thankful that his parents withheld from making a big deal of the transformation. “I think they knew not to, so it’s not like you feel that they’re suddenly into you now. You know that they love you no matter what, you know?”

By this time, Pecknold, whose father builds boats and guitars for a living, was writing his own songs. Despite growing up in the town where grunge took off, Pecknold — just 7 years old when Kurt Cobain died — found his inspirations elsewhere. His obsession with Bob Dylan made the life of a lone troubadour seem like a viable vocation. “The first time I heard Boots of Spanish Leather,” recalls his older sister Aja (yes, as in the Steely Dan album), “it was as if all of the oxygen had been drained from the room, replaced by the wavering, golden longing of this one song. Only it wasn’t Dylan singing, it was my 14-year-old brother.”

Written shortly after his return from that momentous camp expedition, his first song, Sarah Jane, was “just some story about a girl whose dad hated her and kicked her out, so she had to become a prostitute, then she became pregnant. A sob story, basically.”

Pecknold characterises his early songs as attempts to write songs like his other musical role model, Elliott Smith — “to see how he did it, you know?” I suggest that having a massive, ultimately fatal heroin problem seemed to help in that particular instance. Pecknold remembers being desperate to go and see Smith on his last Seattle show, but being too young. “I heard that tour was terrible. He could barely remember the words to his songs.”

Any worries that Pecknold may seek to lubricate the cogs of creativity in a similar way are without foundation on the basis of tonight’s encounter. Supping water from a polystyrene cup, he responds to a question about sharing drugs with his baby-boomer dad by saying: “That has never come up. I don’t smoke weed and I don’t think he does either. Besides, having a drug habit implies you have money to spend on drugs. As it is, I might have to take a job when I get back to Seattle. I was a cook in a restaurant, so I’ll probably go back to that.”

Having made the most unanimously fêted album of 2008, it seems incredible that this even constitutes a possibility — but Pecknold says that his band wouldn’t even be in Europe had their label not advanced them £20,000 to finance these shows. Far from complaining, however, Pecknold’s tone is one of gratitude that someone advanced the money in the first place.

As if to mitigate any accidental negativity, though, he adds: “Maybe I’ll just be able to get part-time work when I return. But hey, I don’t want to sound like a grouch. There’s nothing I really long for right now.” He pauses briefly. “Well, maybe nothing except for a list of countries where it’s acceptable to tip taxi drivers . . . because that’s another source of continual awkwardness.”

- Fleet Foxes’ eponymous debut album is out now on Bella Union. www.myspace.com/fleetfoxes

Explore Music

• CD Reviews

• Live Reviews

• Classical

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010