ON Facebook last Friday, the day the new album, Last Place, was released, Jason Lytle reached out to fans of his band, Grandaddy. “I am relieved to say this album is done, and I'm pleased with it”, he wrote. “The sonics, the feel, the images, the messages....somehow got captured and preserved. It's no longer mine though....it's now ours. Thanks for sticking around and caring...and I hope you enjoy.”

That phrase – “thanks for sticking around and caring” – is clearly from the heart, as is a message in the sleeve notes on Last Place: “Thank you to the fans of Grandaddy. This album exists because of you”. The fans have after all waited eleven long years for a new album.

Grandaddy, who are originally from Modesto, California, broke up in 2006, having released a swansong, Just Like the Fambly Cat, a fine successor to Under the Western Freeway (1997), The Sophtware Slump (2000) and Sumday (2003). The middle album in particular had been showered with critical acclaim, the New York Times describing it as a “heart-achingly beautiful requiem for a culture in which progress and technology have led to alienation and disposability”. (The actor Jason Lee was among those who had their minds blown by the stupendous opening track, He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s the Pilot, a song that inspired his wife, Beth, to come up with the name of Pilot Inspektor for their son).

Lytle, however, wrote and recorded all of Grandaddy’s material on his own – a demanding process that exacted a toll on him. As he explained in a 2006 interview, he worked on The Sophtware Slump “in my boxer shorts, bent over keyboards with sweat dripping of my forehead, frustrated, hungover and trying to call my coke dealer”.

Things fell apart when Grandaddy were touring Sumday, he said in that same interview. He had to be endlessly accommodating – “every photoshoot, every interview, every every, every every everything…” He was miserable, and exhausted, and something had to change. Much more recently, he spoke of the “pretty painful” process of recording Sumday: it was the beginning of the end for him. “I was”, he said, “sick and tired of being sick and tired”. So Grandaddy was broken up after Fambly Cat, and the hardcore fans were left aghast.

In 2012, however, and despite Lytle’s initial reluctance, the band reunited for some live dates, including a gig at Glasgow’s O2 ABC that August. And now comes the rather excellent Last Place. Reviews have been enthusiastic, and Edith Bowman on Virgin Radio made it her album of the week. The band – Lytle, Aaron Burtch, Tim Dryden, Jim Fairchild and Kevin Garcia - is hitting the road again, too, with a couple of Scottish dates this month, and three dates at the Primavera Sound Festivals in Barcelona and Porto in late May/early June. “The return of the psychedelia wizards,” is how Primavera is greeting them.

Last Place is the first album of a two-album deal with Danger Mouse’s label, 30th Century. “Grandaddy have always been one of my favourite bands”, Danger Mouse said late last year. “Their new single [Evermore] is up there with their best work and I’m proud to have them become part of 30th Century Records.”

How did the deal come about? “At some point I was just presented with the option [of signing to 30th Century] and I thought it might be a good idea …,” says Lytle in a phone interview. “I don’t know even what the other options were but it just seemed like a good idea. It seemed like I think I could wrap my head around the concept that while the first album out of the gates could be sort of like, ‘Hi, I’m making another Grandaddy album’ and maybe the next one could be a little bit looser.”

The communal air at Grandaddy’s gigs is evidence of the eternally close bond between group and fans. On Facebook, too, fans have been voicing their delight that Grandaddy are back. One writes that his most treasured possessions include a postcard on his fridge from 10 years ago, written by Lytle to the fan’s new-born daughter. I wondered if this bond had helped sustain Lytle over the last few years.

“Yes, actually, that is true. I’m pretty sure it would have been a much different scenario if I’d just brought the whole thing to a close and it became very clear that nobody else gave a s---. That seems to be not the case. I mean, people were pretty relentless and held pretty firm in letting it be known that Grandaddy was missed and they were still interested in whatever it was that we were. It was a pretty solid source, to tell you the truth, in the making of the album.”

After the split, Lytle relocated to Montana, where he recorded and released two solo albums. He and his wife moved to Portland, Oregon; most of Last Place was put together there, with the rest being done “back home in Modesto”.

“I tend to work in bursts and I’ll go for a while and then regroup and go hard for a while, and stop and regroup”, he adds. Sadly, his marriage had begun falling apart by the time he had relocated to Portland; he ended up crafting the album while going through a divorce. “There was plenty of personal turmoil to keep things interesting” throughout the process.

Several of the songs on Last Place – That’s What You Get for Getting’ Outta Bed, the heartbreaking This Is the Part, The Boat is in the Barn – seem to speak to that turmoil. “I put a lot of work into the production, I put a lot of work into the meaning”, says Lytle. “In order for any of these songs to have made the cut, they had to be resonating pretty deeply with me. I guess those ones in particular are sort of whinging about my dissolved relationship.

“It helps when I can really dig into a subject matter and feel it pretty deeply, because it keeps my interest a lot stronger and a lot longer when I’m working on the stuff, and actually it enables me to listen to the song for years to come and still have a strong connection with it.”

In addition to the reformed Grandaddy, Lytle is part of a new supergroup, BNQT, alongside Fran Healy of Travis, Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos and members of Midlake. An album, Volume 1, is out on Bella Union on April 21.

In the meantime, what was it like working with the other Grandaddies in the studio again? “I went back to doing it the way I used to do it”, he says. “I work mostly alone. I brought Aaron in to do drums for most of it. I did a little bit of drums here and there … I tend to be a lot more focused and be able to reach ideas a lot easier when I’m working by myself”.

It’s good to see Grandaddy back on the road again. “I don’t know,” muses Lytle. He laughs. “It could be a big, horrible mistake. I’m still wrapping my head around it. There’s a lot of preparation. The rehearsals have been going good. We still really enjoy being around each other, which helps immensely. I don’t know …. I’m looking at a big unknown right now. But I’m also a bit of a worrier. Hopefully it will have made sense at the end of the summer. Right now, I’m still wondering what the ---- I got myself into.”

Since the interview, Grandaddy have played the first of their gigs; so far, it all seems to have worked out fine. But then we sort of knew it would.

Grandaddy play Potterrow, Edinburgh, on March 23; and at Glasgow's O2 Academy as part of the BBC 6Music Festival, on March 25. Last Place is out now.