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HE'S ALREADY ACHIEVED more as a songwriter and instrumentalist than most musicians could do in a lifetime. His sound is familiar, with ties to practically every Western genre imaginable and many that lie beyond our horizons. His colleagues, ranging back to Jimi Hendrix and including today's young guns, unify through time in admiration of his accomplishments.

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And so it is hardly surprising that Richard Thompson, nonpareil guitarist and perceptive observer of life's persistent ironies, has produced another masterpiece – The Old Kit Bag. For more than thirty years Thompson has grown as an artist by carefully paring his work down to its essence. As a culmination of this process, The Old Kit Bag, recorded in sparse trio format with minimal overdubs, is a textbook lesson on how to convey layers of meaning with minimal gestures. Down the line from sunny Los Angeles, Richard Thompson spoke to Joe Matera about his new record, gear and his continuing influence on countless of British guitarists.

Joe Matera: The reviews for The Old Kit Bag have been very positive. The Sunday Times for example summed it up perfectly: "...his best album in nearly a decade... stunning guitar work".

Richard Thompson: "The reviews have all been pretty positive on a whole so it's great. Also being off a major label, it's really great to own a record. It's the first time I've really done it and I should have done it 30 years ago!"

What sort of approach do you use when it comes to songwriting?

"I just acquire songs as I tend to write and then put songs into different heaps for different projects. I've got a solo acoustic project that I'm working on so some songs go in that pile. This record was the distilation of the electric pile, the full band album pile. I don't think there's a thematic thread on this record but there is an atmosphere that runs through the songs."

When it comes to your guitar playing you seem most comfortable just playing for the song?

"I always try and play to what the song needs. I like to think that if I have any strength as a guitar player then it's in interpreting songs and playing good accompaniment. And when you play a solo, you then continue the narrative of a song so that's what I really work from. I'm not really thinking beyond, I'm just reacting to what's required".

What sort of gear do you use for recording and live work?

"I've got a '64 Fender Strat and a kind of homemade (Ferrington) guitar that I used on most of the record. The Ferrington is a Fender-like guitar but which is really made out of bits. It's got some strange pick-ups in it. It's got a Gibson P-90, a Broadcaster pick-up and a Stratocaster pick-up; a real mixture of things. For acoustics, I have a few Lowden guitars that I really like and that I used on the record too. They all have a Sunrise pick-up in the soundhole; which is a magnetic pick-up and also an old internal mic and a little condensor mic as well too so I can mix the two signals. Amp wise I've got an old Fender Deluxe from the 1960's a '56 Tweed Deluxe and a Fender Vibroverb. For effects, I use various Line 6's, a Jim Dunlop Univibe and a little Amp Tremolo".

How do you feel about the enormous influence your work with Fairport Convention has had on countless British guitarists?

"I'm quite proud of Fairport and to have been a part of it. And I think what we did was quite a revolutionary thing. It was very influential in a lot of different countries and certainly in different European countries, as it had a great effect on other revivalists. It made it a possibility that there was this way that you can take your traditional music of where you come from and turn it into something contemporary, like you make it into rock and roll. And that you can actually make it into something relevant, so I'm very proud of that".

Do you think your faith (Thompson is a long time devoted follower of Islam) pervades a lot of your music?

"I think whatever you believe in, whatever it is, even if you believe in nothing, I mean that's still a proper belief and that pervades what you do and certainly in whatever you create. I don't think you can really have music that's devoid of some kind of morality. Even if your morality is to bite heads off chickens or something, it's still something that you believe and in a subtle way you want to get that across to people. I think it's at the back of what you do".

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From a maker of acclaimed albums, something that is more of the same, as dependable as any itching in the heart, toothache, telephone bill: it jogs, slows to a crawl, lurches in good-time, stabs at a waltz and snuffles to itself in a corner. Pretty much what you think – not pretty. I'm bored with it.

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Thompson's art has retreated to a point where its supposed recalcitrance – the tension between his grey reluctance to speak at all on this stinking life and the troubadour's addiction to playing – has stiffened and set in a shrewd, appeasing play of gestures. Hand Of Kindness – well, you'll know how it moves: It starts like this, slows up like that, cries just then etc etc. If it was something more than the pains of remorse cleverly sweetened by painstaking craft it could have awoken some ghosts, perhaps, instead of stirring the dregs, rooting around in the aftermath of someone else's passion.

Specifics, really, are what call these tunes, and specifics are something always to invoke suspicion. Every singer must live a life in public but they shouldn't give anything away which has MY LIFE writ so large on it, unless they are already torched to a shadow ('Lady in Satin'). Thompson is like Hammill or Martyn: everybody has to feel his pain. Whether he intends it or not, his broken marriage is daubed all over titles like 'A Poisoned Heart And A Twisted Memory' and 'The Wrong Heartbeat' as if they were divorce papers doubling as open letters.

And it's so blithely agonising, this bleeding heart, so obviously knowing. Costello or, more immediately, John Hiatt (who sings a bit somewhere here) would explode these stories from the inside and set the viewfinder so askew you could penetrate nothing but the hints and the commas and the sticking pins. Thompson insists on a clear monochrome focus, and he distends it all into a straggle with his folk-bloodied instruments. He is a good guitarist, although most of the time he sounds loquacious instead of eloquent.

Tears staining the pages – I daresay they aren't faked, but I'd rather see the act that has the real hurt at a remove from the surface. This is as inevitable as a wolfman on a moonlit night. There – another Richard Thompson record.