I think that creative urge, when it fails and becomes directionless, manifests itself in Unabombers. The fact that I see that the two go hand in hand is a slightly unusual viewpoint in America. Most of the time, people think that, if you stamp out the bad men, if you just say no, it’ll be all right.”What does he mean when he says the terrorists are acting out of love? What does it mean about America that its own citizens can kill for love of it? “I think it means that they feel helpless,” he says with feeling. “That they feel a lack of connection, and a lack of access to channels, to ways to express themselves.

Freedom is a deception, if you don’t have access to those things.” Does he think the Oklahoma bomb was a cry of frustration? “Yeah Granted it’s some lunatic But the lunatics might just be ultra-sensitive. They’re the ones who’ve snapped first.”It isn’t only Byrne’s relationship with his country that is ambiguous. His songs in recent times seem to express frustration with his skin, a wish to escape it Is that really how he feels? “Oh, yeah. I think music does that, that’s part of the excitement of music. It used to be more evident that here was this person who did not belong on stage, but had to get on stage in order to complete himself. That something was missing, and I found it on stage.”He sings, on Feelings, of love letting him forget himself Is that a good thing? “Yeah I think it’s great. It doesn’t have to be a permanent condition, but it’s the kind of thing that happens on a dancefloor, or when people go to church, or at football games.

Just knowing that that can happen to you is a great feeling.” Knowing there’s some hope of release? “That there’s some hope of being different.”Many still see Byrne as a Talking Head, however he sees himself. He’s touchingly modest about this, and people’s unwillingness to give Feelings, an album as good as anything he’s ever done, a chance. His model for a working life isn’t a rock star, anyway, but the owner of an Austin cafe he used to frequent, a woman whose sense of pride rubbed off on everyone she met. “This woman had imparted a sense of possibility to people,” he says, “and they took it with them It was very inspiring.

It seems like the counterweight to all the horrible shit you read in the papers every day is the weight of all the tiny people doing little, kind things once in a while.”It was those people and those acts that Byrne caught in his best songs in his old band, and in a film he made, True Stories But he seems to have more trouble doing it now. On Feelings, you can hear dignity and happiness in the music But in the words, it seems barely possible. “I think maybe I need to get out of the States,” Byrne says abruptly. “Wherever you go, you’re going to be aware of what’s going on. But in America you get this glare of the media, you’re bombarded with everything being for sale It’s a very surreal universe. It can completely obscure anything else.”Does he think it has dimmed his sense of decency? “Yeah, I think it’s been drowned out by the din of all that other noise It’s still there.