THE Decemberists will follow up the January 19 release of their seventh studio album, What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World, by touring Britain in February.

Colin Meloy's American indie folk-rock band from Portland, Oregon, will play Leeds O2 Academy on St Valentine's Day, February 14.

Issued by Rough Trade Records, the album is produced by the band and long-time collaborator Tucker Martine, who has worked with such acts as My Morning Jacket and Neko Case, and it will formThe Decemberists’ first full-length studio album since 2011’s The King Is Dead.

That album made its debut at number one in the Billboard 200 in the United States and featured the Grammy-nominated single Down By The Water.

The first single from the new record, the soaring, bittersweet Make You Better, is out now. Frontman Meloy busked the song to fans and press in front of a giant mural of the album artwork in Williamsburg, New York, to announce its arrival.

Officially , The Decemberists were "on hiatus" for the past few years, but Meloy, Chris Funk, Jenny Conlee, Nate Query and John Moen nonetheless remained visible. They released a live album, We All Raise Our Voices To The Air; contributed a song to The Hunger Games soundtrack; appeared in animated form on The Simpsons and performed on the season six finale of Parks And Recreation.

Meloy, the group’s lead singer and principal songwriter, immersed himself in writing Wildwood Imperium, the third book of The Wildwood Chronicles, the fantasy-adventure series he created with his wife, illustrator Carson Ellis.

What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World is The Decemberists’ most varied work to date, both musically and emotionally.

On their past two studio albums, The Hazards Of Love and The King Is Dead, the songs flowed out of an overall theme, but the band reversed this approach for the new record when entering the studio in May 2013.

"Typically we book four or five weeks in the studio and bang out the whole record,” says Meloy.

“This time, we started by just booking three days and didn’t know what we would record. There was no direction or focus; we wanted to just see what would come out. We recorded Lake Song on the first day, live, and then two more songs in those three days. And the spirit of that session informed everything that came after.”

The first songs were highly personal, a change from the strong narrative thrust that has characterised much of The Decemberists’ work.

“Having a family, having kids, having this career, getting older; all of these things have made me look more inward,” says Meloy.

Those reflections come to the fore in 12/17/12, a song he wrote after watching President Obama address the nation following the Newtown school shootings.

“I was hit by a sense of helplessness, but also the message of ‘Hold your family close’,” says Meloy. This bewildering, conflicted feeling emerged in a phrase near the end of the song – “what a terrible world, what a beautiful world" – that gave the album its title.

The record's narrative songs, such as Cavalry Captain and Carolina Low, are imbued with subtlety, even levity. The sound is fuller and richer, inspired in part by Leonard Cohen’s 1977 collaboration with Phil Spector, Death Of A Ladies’ Man.

Tickets for February 14 are on sale online at o2academyleeds.co.uk