Watch Teddy Thompson perform

There is an unspoken protocol to the interview process, in which it is tacitly understood by all concerned that the “product” being promoted is a wonderful thing, quite possibly a career high. The journalist will affect the notion this is so — at least for the duration of the interview. In turn, the “artist” will reassure the journalist they have never been happier with a piece of work.

Nobody seems to have explained this to Teddy Thompson.

His latest album — which is, in fact, a wonderful thing — is bursting with disconcertingly jaunty songs filled with self-doubt, self-pity and the occasional outbreak of self-loathing. Critics have greeted it with almost unanimous acclaim. Journalists are lining up to talk to him. And he is about to reach a huge new audience by supporting James Blunt on a European tour.

Prospects for the son of folk-rock pioneers Richard and Linda Thompson are better than ever. Not that you would know it from talking to him. “To be honest,” he declares glumly, “I thought this would be the last roll of the dice.”

Over the next hour, Thompson will beat himself up about his career prospects, pausing only to apologise for his relentlessly bleak outlook. “My default position is gloom,” he admits. But it is, of course, the gloom that draws us to his songs. As he says, “sad songs with happy tunes” make the best kind. And, apart from the tragic-comic ballad Turning the Gun on Myself — a sad song with a sad tune — that is what he gives us on his third self-penned album, A Piece of What You Need.

After almost 10 years of trying, he has found not just his voice but his sound; producer Marius de Vries filling out the sketches of his last two albums, Teddy Thompson (2000) and Separate Ways (2006), with a colourful palette that includes fairground organ, mariachi trumpets and all kinds of odd sound effects, including a gunshot.

The opening, The Things I Do, sets the tone, with him bemoaning his own hedonistic behaviour, confessing he’s “turning into someone I despise”. This might sound like a midlife crisis were it not for two things: he is only 31, and he sounded equally miserable on his last album. “I’m still in that state, I think,” he nods. “I thought I had come out of it. I had a girlfriend for a year and felt very grown-up, as if I’d moved on and was very well behaved. Then that came to an end, and now I feel as if I’m back in the same place. Something has to change. In your early thirties, things start hitting you much harder — you’re going to get fatter and start losing your hair, and getting weaker, really.” He picks desultorily at his chicken salad, concluding: “I wasn’t sure I’d start thinking about this so soon.”

This is not the way musicians normally promote records, and his publicist would, doubtless, be horrified. “I think I have a bad attitude,” he confesses. “I keep telling myself to be more positive, but I don’t see it all working out. I don’t see how the record is going to sell, I don’t see how I’m going to be able to make the next one, and I ask myself: ‘Do I enjoy it that much to keep doing it?’ ” He looks around for an answer in the Barbican Centre’s ponds, before concluding: “I just don’t know.”

The title track suggests not. An attack on today’s music industry, its lyrics ask: “Is this what we really want? Background music from a restaurant? Spare me, it’s doing in my head.”

“I can’t help but wish I was in a different era, when people cared about music more,” he says. “I’m the dregs of the business. I don’t sell records, I don’t know how I’m on an imprint of a major label [Verve/ Universal]. I go on tour, take a band and can’t pay my bills. I can barely survive.” He sighs. “I would say I’ve been doing a job for nearly 10 years I haven’t really had any success at. I should get a life. I should be something else.”

This is depressing stuff from a man who said, two years ago, that he would “rather hold up my Mojo review and sell two records than a million and have terrible reviews”. “I’ve changed my mind,” he says. “That was before the last record , when there was still hope.”

Suddenly, he stands up, lights a cigarette and pulls himself out of his torpor. “I’m sorry, I’m just very changeable. Tomorrow I’ll feel really happy about it all.” He looks unconvinced. “I feel as though I’ve done really badly with this interview. I’m having a bit of a weird time in my life. I can’t decide whether I feel really bad about all this or really positive. I’m on the knife’s edge — it could go either way. Sometimes I wake up and feel good, but I’m beginning to feel it’s too hard . . . I feel like I’m not getting anywhere.”

Then he remembers what he’s here for. “Erase all that. I don’t want to be negative. I’ve just got to cheer up.” And with as much enthusiasm as he can muster, he makes a radical statement of intent: “I really do like this album!” Perhaps he’ll cheer up when he finds he’s not alone.

A Piece of What You Need is out tomorrow

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