MANCHESTER band James cross the Pennines tonight to play Leeds First Direct Arena on their Girl At The End Of The World tour.

They will be promoting the 14th studio album of their 34-year career, released on BMG Recordings in March as the follow-up to 2014's La Petite Mort, their best record in years.

Band leader Tim Booth, once of Boston Spa, now rooted in the United States, talks of James albums being a "a collaborative process that allows ample room for improvisation, intuition, skill and dumb luck". "From the outside, our process looks like chaos but chaos is our friend and we have a history that gives us confidence that something magical will eventually appear," he says.

Guitarist and violin player Saul Davies concurs. "We get together in a room, we make an unholy racket, we record it all, and one by one, in little groups, we listen to what we've done, then we shape it more and we play it back to the others in the band," he says. "So it's a process of distilling it down or building it up, and the five of us who were together in those sessions were all very much responsible for that process.

"It's a very challenging way to make a record and it's not the norm but it works for us. For people to gather in a room and break the silence with music, after staring at each other like gormless fools...in truth that would be difficult in other bands, but there's something about us, about how we understand each other after all these years."

Saul sees Girl At The End Of The World as "feeling a little like a continuation of La Petite Mort". "We decided we wanted to work with the producer Max Dingel again as we knew La Petite Mort was a good record," he says. "We wanted to take that relationship further and we loved recording in the Highlands, so we ended up shadowing what we did on the last album but we pushed it sonically.

"But I think this record is slightly more playful, and we were always going to make a record like that after the heaviness of the last one [when Tim Booth wrote about mortality after the death of his mother]."

Take the closing title track, for example. "It's about a girl driving around a canyon, driving recklessly, driving off the cliff edge, as we're interested in that moment when you see your life floating before you," says Saul. "But who knows what you see at that time; it will remain a mystery."

James have played Leeds First Direct Arena and Scarborough Open Air Theatre in the past couple of years, two Yorkshire gigs with a glorious communal atmosphere that reaffirmed their status as a supreme live act who grow ever more exhilarating as the years go by.

"I would say that our 'consistent level' is getting higher and higher, and we're lucky because we have an audience that has come to expect the unexpected, and that's a consequence of our relationship that's been cultivated over nearly 35 years now," says Saul.

"As a band, we've always done our own thing so we can be quite challenging in our gigs, and you can feel the audience willing us on, which makes us want to keep on playing. That relationship keeps us going, but we've always nurtured it. It's based on hard work and we love working hard."

This philosophy spills over into the band's creative process. "We're now making records that have a very strong contemporary flavour to them." says Saul. "It's hard for me to think of another band from among our peers who are doing that, and I guess that's paying off as the tour has sold really well."

Saul is glad that the band chose Girl At The End Of The World as the album title because "it's a beautiful, immediate image". "It's good that the record has been very positively received," he says. "I feel we're in a very good place right now and that makes me turn my thoughts to wondering what out next record will be like.

"I have no doubt we'll make another record, having signed a three-record deal with BMG, starting with this album. It means, with the band going forward, as long as we don't blow it, we can look forward to more time together, which is amazing given that we've entered our 35th year as a band."

James play Leeds First Direct Arena tonight and Hull City Hall on Monday. Box office: gigsandtours.com and ticketmaster.co.uk or on 0844 811 0051 or 0844 824 4824.