In Compass, a lot of that electronic spirit is creeping back in, but the songs are thoroughly well-written.

This one’s very much about me — more than the last two albums, because I worked with Mocky so intensively on the last few. I came to rely on him more as a stabilizer, like my foil. I’ll go out on a limb with an idea, but I’ll always run it by him. In a way my musical identity started getting, not dictated, but… evolving together. When I started this album, I was nervous, like, “Who am I gonna get to help me?” But at the same time, I didn’t have a plan, you know? [Then] Beck called me.

How did you and Beck get together in the first place?

I opened up for him in 2006 for a whole tour. He was really into my show and genuinely loved it. He invited me onto his stage quite a lot and wanted to work with me. We actually did go into the studio for a bit in L.A. He was working on something that never came out in the end, just a weird idea. He wanted to print songs straight to vinyl. Anyway, I had just moved here [New York] in about February 2009. I was thinking about making a new record, but I didn’t really have a plan. Beck called and said, “I just wondered if you wanted some production assistance if you’re gonna be making something new?” The fucking timing was insane… kind of spooky.

Was that prior to the Record Club project that you had done with him?

Around about the same time. I went to L.A. just to hang out and see how we got along as a writing/production partnership. He has a lot of particular ways of working, and they’re really inspirational insofar as he’s very spontaneous, very quick-witted, as you’d imagine. He just has such a huge pool of music swimming around in his head.

How much had you written prior to those first sessions?

I started with a tabula rasa. It was a little intimidating going into Beck’s home studio, and I’m coming in like, “Hey, uh, let’s make some music.” We had scheduled another meeting after that a few months down the line [since] I had a tour to do in Europe… So I was really against the clock. I had basically a month to write everything. And I thought, “Why not? If I can do four tracks in three days with Beck, I can do that.” I had a lot to draw on, a lot of these journals and things. The thing that was so amazing about working with Beck is that he ups the ante a lot… And Beck’s kind of a weird fan of mine. His son was super into Multiply, and I think that brought me closer to him; I was already in the house. I just wanted to impress him, in a very basic way.