THE National will play Leeds First Direct Arena on December 8 as one of only four dates on their late-autumn British tour.

The Cincinnati, Ohio five-piece will be promoting their eighth studio album, I Am Easy To Find, out on May 17 on 4AD, the same day tickets go on sale at 10am at gigsandtours.com.

On September 3 2017, film director Mike Mills emailed frontman Matt Berninger to introduce himself and, in very short order, the most ambitious project of The National’s nearly 20-year career was born. Plans for a hard-earned vacation withered and died.

The Los Angeles filmmaker was coming off his third feature, 20th Century Women, and was interested in working with the band on...something. A video maybe. Berninger, already a fan of Mills’s films, not only agreed to collaborate, but essentially handed over the keys to The National's creative process too.

The result is two-fold: I Am EasyTo Find, a 24-minute film by Mills starring Swedish actress Alicia Vikander, and I Am Easy To Find, a 68-minute album by The National. The former is not the video for the latter; the latter is not the soundtrack to the former.

The two projects are, as Mills calls them, "playfully hostile siblings that love to steal from each other", sharing a vision of what it means to be human in 2019. The film was composed like a piece of music; the music was assembled like a film, by a film director. Berninger, the natural focal point was deliberately side-staged in favour of a variety of female voices: Gail Ann Dorsey; Lisa Hannigan; Sharon Van Etten; Mina Tindle; Kate Stables of This Is The Kit, plus The Brooklyn Youth Choir.