Peter Crawley hears all about the Dandy Warhols' new home, where they've recorded 'the greatest psychedelic record since Dark Side of the Moon'

Who lives in a house like this? You step through the front door into a perfectly preserved, historically accurate machine shop from the early '70s, where calendars of pneumatic girls posing with pneumatic drills peek out from the wood-panelled walls. You turn right into a Moroccan dining room with a giant table that seats 20. Moving along past a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf, we reach a room where every surface is a flat, gun-metal grey, lit entirely by red lights and offset by a giant horseshoe-shaped sofa and a mixing desk. This is the library/screening room/ lounge.

There is no evidence of a fleet of Bentleys purring in the driveway, the dimensions of any plasma screens are never revealed, and if there are gallons of Cristal cooling behind double-door refrigerators, Courtney Taylor-Taylor doesn't mention them. But even before we reach a faux-alleyway lined with white shag carpet and Victorian lampposts, or the recreated 1950s fall-out shelter that serves as a studio mixing room, or the all-maroon bar-cum-studio for vocal recordings, it's clear that the Dandy Warhols have the crib to end all cribs.

"It's our clubhouse for sure," says Taylor-Taylor, shrugging apologetically as the Kensington sunshine streams in the lounge of The Royal Garden Hotel and forces him to don a pair of sunglasses indoors. (How perfectly rock star.)

The rest of the group - Zia McCabe, Peter Holstrom and Brent DeBoer (or Fathead, as he gamely introduces himself from beneath an impressive corkscrew afro) - sit, patient and attentive, as Courtney talks us through this virtual tour of The Odditorium, the Dandies' art installation-cum-recording studio. In short, their pad. From the L-shaped bar with the Hammond organ to the authentic log cabin floor of the kitchen, Courtney spares no details.

Every tangent is generously indulged, his trademark drawl never gets beyond second-gear, and the precious minutes of our allotted interview time ebb steadily away. Reports of Taylor-Taylor's taciturnity are greatly exaggerated. The only trouble with asking him a question is that he tends to answer it.

Or perhaps he's just house-proud. Inspired by Andy Warhol's The Factory and built two years ago, The Odditorium is the size of a quarter of a city block ("You can't imagine the size of it," insists Zia) and may even pass muster in their hometown of Portland, Oregon, which is home to the world's biggest bookstore.

"It's just ours," says Courtney. "And our friends come over and hang out. And, like, if The Strokes or Duran Duran or David Bowie are in town, we have them over for dinner and they have a place to hang out. Coz it's tough on the road, man."

The sprawling layout and wildly eclectic aesthetic of the Odditorium have also left an indelible mark on the Dandies' fifth album, Odditorium or Warlords of Mars, an uncompromising affair that blends arch humour with the unadorned rock of their past alongside 10 minute-plus drones and brass-parping psychedelia. Conspicuously short on three-minute pop, Odditorium is unlikely to trouble the attentions of a mobile phone ad campaign. But like the space that inspired the album, it's very easy to become lost in it.

The album was co-produced by Taylor-Taylor, and its sound echoes a huge amount of control. "I basically bought our artistic freedom. We get to do whatever the fuck we want. Nobody can withhold money from us to do it." It is also the house that Bohemian built. "You just had to have one hit song," he says. "Then you make a decision about whether you trust yourself enough to continue doing this for a living. I had to ask myself if I wanted to make more money or is this the last money? Now, if this was the last money then I would have bought a giant house, paid for it in cash and bought two or three brand new cars that I could just garage up and then I could manage a McDonald's for the rest of my life and be happy."

And would McDonald's fulfil him? He thinks for a moment. "I would only have to do it part-time if I had my mansion paid off," he deadpans. "But I'm just getting started. I'm only now achieving the level of skill that I need to dominate all these different fields that we make a living at. So for me it was no question. I need to have more control and I need to have more tools at my disposal at two in the morning."

These seem like calm and mature times for the once supposedly brazen band, renowned for leaving behind clouds of intoxicants and groupies in their wake. As Zia admits, previously her sleep-deprivation was self-inflicted. Today, as the keyboardist proudly shows you the reason for her fatigue - the well-stamped passport of her eight-month-old baby, Matilda Louise - it's odd to think back to the days when she performed topless.

Now that they're all homeowners in serious relationships, the Dandies seem to have retreated somewhat from their heedless days. "Well, Brent and I haven't," says Courtney. "We've tried to, but Brent and I are still the life of the party . . . except I live with a yoga instructor, so I have the benefit of eating a lot of Quinoa, salad, shit like that."

It's easy to see why the riveting documentary DiG! revealed the Dandy Warhols as "the most well-adjusted band in America". The parallel stories of the Dandies and the car-wreck creativity of the Brian Jonestown Massacre positioned them as the sell-outs to BJM's burn-outs, according to that old rock'n'roll fable.

And if Courtney comes across on film as an extremely savvy operator, waging war against the panjandrums of his record label, after 10 years in the business ("That's longer than the Beatles," he muses, "that's longer than Led Zeppellin), things still aren't any easier.

"There's always issues you have to deal with," says Peter Holstrom quietly. "And either the people change or the problems change."

Odditorium, however, was recorded without outside interference, and shrewdly burned onto CD as just one track so that neither the president of Capitol nor his A&R man could skip through the record hunting for singles. "So both of them did the same thing," says Courtney. "They put it in their car and drove around for an hour and called me back and said this is probably the greatest psychedelic record since Dark Side of the Moon. Then you just hand them a bill for it at the end of the day: Turn it all in. Wow 'em. And then stick 'em with the check. And it's a bargain."

And yet DiG! concluded with a group neurosing about whether their music would be remembered a generation from now. Do they still worry about the shadow of the future?

"Not really," says Peter, "now that DiG! is out. Because it will be in video stores forever, people will be forever finding it and, through that, digging up our records." "I still worry about it," interjects Courtney. "It's all I worry about. I don't really care about a legacy. I care about us having a fucking job, so we can do this stuff. I don't see any of us working day jobs." McDonald's, it seems, may have to wait.

Perhaps that's why they're so content with Odditorium. "It just feels like it's our first record," says Courtney, quite genuinely. "Everything else was an art school experiment in learning how to make records."

After a decade of the vagaries of life on the road, The Dandy Warhols finally have an album they can call home.

Odditorium or Warlords of Mars is released on September 9th through EMI. The Dandy Warhols play the Ambassador, Dublin on October 22nd