For what it’s worth, after excusing himself from his FaceTime interview to take a bathroom break, Toledo returned without the mask on and finished the conversation as an average-looking guy with a narrow face, shaggy dark hair and a toothy smile.

Toledo turns 28 in August. “I think I’m almost at the point where journalists can’t call me young anymore,” he said. “I hated it while it was happening. Maybe now I’ll miss it.”

He was only 23 when he signed to Matador, and now he’s at an age where artists tend to flame out or begin seeking ways to renegotiate their relationship with public life, their bargain with the world. Over the years, Toledo has struggled publicly with music journalists’ tendency to read his work through an autobiographical lens; in 2018, he called out a Rolling Stone writer on Twitter for an interpretation of “Twin Fantasy” that Toledo called “a weird, gross, inaccurate representation of my personal life.”

Asked if wearing the mask in media appearances was about creating a harder line between himself and the version of Toledo who appears in Car Seat Headrest’s songs, he replied: “That might be a part of it. But I think it’s an attempt to get people to look at me in a different way, especially onstage.”

“I’m not trying to take anything away from people,” he continued. “It’s a connection with the music — I don’t want to slam their fingers in the door, regardless of how they have that connection. But I do want to offer something new, and I think the mask is a way to do that.”