''If art wins, we all win,'' says Beck. Throughout the hour we spend together, he is inquisitive, introspective and mildly amused by the world around him. He says his children – Cosimo, 13, and Tuesday, 10 – are his conduit for modern life. "So much in the culture was not made for me," he says. "It's the antithesis of what I was taught to do or how to be in the world. I'd sit backstage at Lollapalooza with Pavement, Sonic Youth and Courtney Love and nobody was taking pictures of anything or anybody. But when I see it through my kids' eyes, I get it." Beck is preparing to release Colors, a buoyant alt-pop album that is his most accessible yet. The album's first two singles, Dreams and Wow, are his biggest radio hits in 20 years. The release comes at the apex of an improbable career resurgence. Just a few years ago, Beck was demoralised by a spinal injury that coincided with a crisis of confidence that left him questioning his relevance. For several years, it seemed unlikely he would record or perform in public again.

"Colors feels like the mood of my last four years," he says. "We've been through the struggles and the vagaries of life. There is joy in coming back. It's different from the fire and raw angst of starting out, wanting to break everything apart and do something radical. It's a place of appreciation and gratefulness." Beck's father, David, was a bluegrass musician. His mother Bibbe and grandfather Al were avant-garde artists. Funds were tight. His parents divorced when he was nine and his mother married a Mexican artist with whom she ran a cafe. "My childhood was very disjointed," he says. Music was not his first choice. "If I could go to any school for free, I would have gone into something else. I liked filmmaking, design, photography. But they all required money. For $60 I got a guitar and notebook. It was something I could do without any help."

Soon enough though, he was captivated by music, especially Woody Guthrie, Hank Williams and the Carter Family. Art is not the only thing he shared with his parents. Much has been made of his family's link to Scientology. His father became involved in the church in the 1960s and his own connection has polarised fans. In various interviews he has described participating in both Jewish and Scientologist traditions. His wife of 13 years, Marissa Ribisi, (sister of actor Giovanni) is an avowed Scientologist. Questions around spirituality are salient to any Beck interview. Yet his most seminal spiritual memory, he insists, originates with his grandfather, with whom he often stayed during school holidays. "He was a Presbyterian minister," Beck says. "My grandparents were a big part in raising me. I was in church all the time, listening to his sermons. As a little kid, my mind was wandering. Nobody sat me down and explained it all to me." Is Beck still a spiritual person, then?

"I am in the sense I really don't know," he says, carefully. "I know the power in certain things: human connection and unexplainable things in the world. But I'm as clueless as anybody. My music and art are my religion and that's what I see the world through and the way I connect with something higher, whatever that is." His upbringing had implications outside of art and religion. It also influenced his education, and he regularly changed schools before joining LA's notorious McArthur Park High School. "Our area was rough and very violent," he says. "It was the first school in America with metal detectors at the door. It was clear I wasn't going to last at high school. So I left and got a job." After work most days, 16-year-old Beck would sit in on classes at the local city college. Too young to enrol, he befriended a writer/teacher, Austin Straus, who was married to the poet Wanda Coleman. "I started hanging out at their house," he says. "Austin was a Ginsberg type, very passionate. They took me under their wing. It was strange … me, some retired people, local bohemians and immigrants learning English. No other kids. It was a very formative phase."

By 18 he was restless, and with extreme naivety, he cobbled together $30 for a bus fare to New York. "I had no options besides manual labor," he says. "I knew a girl with a dorm on 8th Street. I slept on the floor with her two roommates for two nights until they locked me out. I bounced around for a year. In the end, I had no money and nowhere to live. The city pressed the eject button on me after a year." Twelve months after returning to LA, he recorded Loser, a hip-hop inspired stoner anthem that would become an era-defining classic. The song was finally released three years later, in 1993, on the label Bongload Records. "We took it to every major label and nobody would release it," he says. "Bongload put out 500 copies to see what would happen. Most journalists and other bands assumed it was a cynical, corporate creation of the counter-culture of the time. But it was the most fringe, random thing." By 2008, Beck had released 11 diverse, relatively successful albums. For a time, he was a genuine alternative-rock superstar.

"It was intense," he says. "I was trying to experiment and also do something that felt relevant and necessary. But the negativity was overpowering. It was left over from the punk era: mistrust the success and the mainstream and fetishise self-destruction. I tell bands now to enjoy that moment. Forget everything, take it in." In 2008, things begun to go pear-shaped. Having for years ignored a spinal injury sustained during a video shoot back in 2005, he was now finding the pain debilitating. An enforced layoff followed, along with a period of self-doubt. For the first time in a richly eclectic career, Beck wondered whether it was over. "It was touch and go," he says. "I was laid up and limited, a lot of physical therapy and trial and error. There is a certain lifespan in doing this. I felt many things giving me the message maybe the world was done with records from me." He stopped touring. "I thought maybe I wouldn't make records any more and just write for others," he says. "I wanted to work for someone else. The majority of any money I made I'd spent on studio time figuring out what I was doing. I thought I could put it to use. I wanted to get my hands dirty." Creatively rejuvenated, he started work on Morning Phase. Released in 2014, it was his first album in six years. Originally envisioned as a country album, Beck leaned on his much-loved 2002 break-up album Sea Change as its inspiration.

In a stunning boilover, Morning Phase triumphed at the 2015 Grammys, winning Album of the Year. Just as startling, Kanye West bum-rushed the stage to protest his win over Beyonce. "I was shocked," Beck says now. "I had walked away empty-handed for 17 years. But I soaked it in and enjoyed it." As for Kanye? "What can you say," he shrugs. "It's funny." The initial conceit behind Colors was straightforward enough: a peppy, danceable pop record equally inspired by punk rock, disco and hip-hop. "It's like if the Clash decided to bring in some disco and hip-hop beats," he explains. "I wanted the songs to sound great in the car or at a party."

That's not to say the lyrics lack darkness. One album highlight, Dear Life, is a gorgeous melding of the Beatles and the Beach Boys and its video sentimentally evokes sunny California. Yet the lyrics are something else entirely. "Dear life, I'm holding on," he sings. "How long must I wait, before the thrill is gone?" "Listen closely and there's room for interpretation," he says, coyly. "None of it stops you just enjoying the songs in a pure sense. You can listen on different levels. I thought a lot about that. These days, we know far too much." One of the songs, No Distraction, muses about how technology and social media inexorably altered the way we live. It's something a modern father of two ponders constantly. "I'll walk into a room and there's five people looking down at screens," he says. "Nobody is interacting. Anybody raising a family knows having a conversation for more than two sentences is difficult with kids. You have to make an effort to just be there."

Beck spent more than two years working on Colors' 10 songs. When pressed, he divulges he made "four or five albums" just to land on the finished product. He also admits to a compulsive perfectionist streak that could be interpreted as competitive. A recent Kendrick Lamar concert was bracing: he hints at feeling both anxious and inspired. "Maybe that feeling never goes away. We crossed some sort of divide … There used to be these rules. I knew the rules. You'd be embarrassed to be No. 1 because you knew a backlash was coming. Now, it's a different mentality: if art wins, we all win. It's a victory if it just exists." Colors is released on October 13 through EMI Music.