“Jim was like, ‘You know I’m going to get blamed for this’,” Tweedy laughs, “and I said, ‘Yeah, but we want to do it anyway.’”Not that YHF or Ghost forsake songs for esoteric indulgences. The line-up may have changed (only he and the bassist, John Stirratt, remain from the group who made A.M.), but he describes the current one as “the definitive version”, and the one most likely to capture his ideal of “being able to embrace change while playing as one”. I love records that create their own universe, which I think we’ve done better on the last two than the previous three.”For all his troubles, Tweedy’s got a lot of confidence in Wilco right now. “And with the new one, it’s just a rock record, y’know? I’m proud it lets it all hang out. “I don’t think Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was playing hard-to-get,” he says. Both albums contain some of Tweedy’s purest writing, staying true to his faith in rock music’s ability to capture raw feeling. I’m not a technically proficient guitar player but I love playing.

That’s all I let matter on this record.”Indeed, probably the only inorganic note on Ghost is, well, a note – in the shape of a 12-minute machine drone that bridges the last two tracks. It’s tempting to attribute this more avant-garde touch to its producer, the alt.rock icon Jim O’Rourke, but it’s Tweedy’s doing. “It was also another place where it was one step ahead of the lyrics. I could get to things emotionally with the guitar that I wasn’t able to get at with language and I felt confident for the first time to let it all hang out. As she talks she bats the air with her hands and lets out great belly laughs.

It’s not often that you find an interviewee so ready to divulge her innermost secrets. When she’s not deliberating over her sprawling social life – recently she went to a party given by Lou Reed and to another hosted by the film director Pedro Almodovar – she’s breathlessly dissecting her love life. She tells me that she’s dating a young doctor at the moment, though she’s determined to keep her options open.At 38, fame has arrived late for Gilberto, though she comes with an impressive pedigree. Her father Joao Gilberto, known as “O Mito” (“The Legend”) in his native Brazil, is the famously reclusive singer credited with inventing the laid-back bossa nova sound along with his songwriting partner Antonio Carlos Jobim.