Space-pop combo Grandaddy have quietly imploded, and Brian Boyd gets an earful from foundeR Jason Lytle about touring, labels, modesto - and the nagging lure of mainstream success

IT'S great, but in a non-great way. Usually when someone is cattle-prodded into the interview tent, it's for a talk-up, not a talk down. But then Grandaddy main man Jason Lytle would have to be different.

"It's over, I'm giving up, I don't like it any more," he says about his decision to disband Grandaddy and move to the wilds of Montana. Here's the shoulder Jason, cry all you like. "Fuckin' indie labels, fuckin' compromises left, right and centre and especially fuckin' touring," he laments. "I want to be the poster boy for not touring."

It's a story you don't hear that often, or at least not as unleavened as Lytle tells it: Band comes along, makes some waves, sells a very respectable amount of records, tours the world, never has a bad word said about them in the press, but fails to make that crucial leap towards the next stage.

The self-styled "solar-powered space-pop" combo that was Grandaddy could have been plotted somewhere along the indie-to-prog rock continuum. Albums such as Under the Western Freeway (1997) and the rather brilliant The Sophtware Slump (2000) were always huge critical favourites, and in the impossibly catchy single Summer Here Kids they had one of the best songs of the last five years.

Rather bizarrely, Grandaddy will also be remembered for putting the nondescript (if not a bit weird) north-eastern California town of Modesto on the rock'n'roll map. Lytle's hate/love/hate relationship with the town informed a lot of the band's lyrics. Now that the only reason tying him to the place - Grandaddy - is gone, he's on the next bus out of town.

"There's nothing to do here except sit around and do drugs or get someone pregnant in the bushes," he says matter-of-factly (and sounding like he's probably done both). "It's in the middle of nowhere, a semi-desert area which has now been irrigated to near death when really they should have just left it alone.

"About an hour ago I cycled three miles into one of the local coffee shops and had some ideas about putting on an acoustic show or something there. But by the time I arrived I just thought 'fuck it, why bother' and went back. Initially I thought this is great, I don't have to go through booking agents and management anymore, but I soon forgot about that."

In retrospective mode, Lytle says he's happy that the band's renowned stubborness paid off over their career. Still, he does admit that "refusing to buy into the way things are traditionally supposed to be done did make things a lot worse for the band." The split was inevitable: "We rode it out for as long as we could. I just thought I was beating myself up towards the end. We did decide to record the last ever Grandaddy album here in Modesto [Just Like the Fambly Cat] but I knew it was a record we were never going to tour. We were never a 'let's do a farewell tour' type of band."

Lytle says there was no one particular reason for his disaffection with both the band and the music industry. He then goes on to give several, which he delivers as a soliloquy.

"First, there was the label. They kept changing the people who worked there and we never knew who anybody was or if they were into us or not. Then all the budgets got slashed. Then they got slashed some more. We saw ourselves as just a bunch of over-glorified roadies who were into playing music that inspired us. I'm not so sad that I didn't have my ear to the ground - that I didn't know what it would take to propel us into the next stratosphere and what that would entail.

"People were playing on our strengths as much as our weaknesses. The music really meant so much to us. We didn't want to get to the next level by simply sounding like some other briefly fashionable band.

"Labels don't know what they like. They have to be told what to like from the people out in the trenches. We'd release stuff, get an indifferent reaction from the label, then it would go around the world and be acclaimed and then, when it wound its way back to the label, they'd say how good it was.

"There were endless compromises. They wanted to take the first track off The Sophtware Slump, which is a nine minute song, and edit it down to three minutes. And we're going no, fuck off. I could have written a blatantly pop album to help our cause, but I didn't see why I should have to go to those lengths."

Lytle doesn't rule out a blatantly pop album, but he would never record it/tour it. "I could write pop for Britney Spears or Ashlee Simpson. I would do it if I could hide in a cave and never have to talk about it. I sort of like that idea of being the wizard behind the curtain. If you're going to sell out, you might as well sell out in the worst and biggest way possible."

He will plot his next musical adventures from a remote area of Montana. "I searched for ages for a new place to live in. There are so many interesting pockets in the US, away from the big cities. The place I'm going to is a bit more interesting culturally than Modesto. I've even packed up my home studio and am going to reassemble it in Montana."

He still has one specific musical ambition. "I want to sneak that one hit song on to the radio through the back door. It's exciting that there is a shred of a possibility that I can do it, particularly now that I'm free from all the bullshit of being in a band and on a label and all of that. I can approach this from a different angle.

"You know that song by 10cc, I'm Not in Love? That's the sort of song I want to get on to the radio. A song that is just a one-off and will never happen again."

If you have any doubts about Lytle's ability to pen a massive radio hit, go and download his Summer Here Kids song forthwith for empirical evidence.

Perhaps it was just the wrong time and/or wrong place for Lytle and Grandaddy. He confesses to looking on with some envy at how bands such as Arcade Fire have managed to come up through a different route.

"Things have changed, and for the better," he says. "When we first started, our whole idea was to be like Pavement. You know, sell a certain amount of records and have our own cottage industry. But we found ourselves in an industry situation which didn't facilitate that. So don't be that surprised if I write a song for Britney. I don't want to be a complete rock'n'roll tragedy."

The final Grandaddy album, Just Like the Fambly Cat, is released on May 12th and reviewed on page 10