The Decemberists could have continued walking fantastical worlds forever. Instead, they moved out to the country.

On 2009's "The Hazards of Love," the Oregon quintet led its followers deep into the woods, spinning a tale of forest dwellers in love and in peril against a soundtrack that ranged from pastoral folk to clattering metal. Now, leaving that fairyland behind, the band drives into the heart of rural America with "The King Is Dead" -- another conceptual disc, but one without a narrative, and one without the group's art-house leanings.

Recording in a barn just outside their home base of Portland, the Decemberists had never immersed themselves so completely in roots music, although the desire for dirt roads and open skies -- and minimalism -- isn't new.

"We've always had a bit of a folky/country bent," Colin Meloy pointed out in a recent phone interview. "I feel like we've been threatening to make the 'barn record' ever since [the 2005 album] 'Picaresque' -- this idea of trying to do something a little more stripped-down, a little more simple, keep the songs a little more economical. But we kept getting tempted away by longer-form stuff."

One may wonder if the Decemberists took their grandiosity to its limit with the previous album. "Oh, no! I think we could have gone even farther," he countered. "You could make a whole box set that's just one song that goes on for hours. It wasn't a question of 'We've gone as far as we can; we'll never be able to top this.' I think we definitely could -- and that was maybe one of the reasons why it made sense to retract a little bit."

If the Decemberists wanted to challenge expectations, or avoid a game of one-upmanship with themselves, they succeeded. Rather than alienating longtime admirers, "The King Is Dead" appears to have increased their fan base; it debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard chart, selling 94,000 copies. By contrast, "The Hazards of Love" debuted at No. 14 with 19,000.

Editing himself, for once

Meloy said he didn't set out to craft a country-rock collection. ("You can never plan on what direction you're going to go in. At least I can't.") But there were a number of leftover tunes that didn't fit the "Hazards of Love" song cycle, and his subsequent writing was "in a similar bent. By the time I had enough songs for a record, they all felt like they fit together."

The idea of strength in economy was fairly new to Meloy: "I haven't really made much of an effort to self-edit in a lot of [previous albums]. As a consequence, I think even the short songs tend to go on a little long. And on this record, if a phrase or a few measures didn't absolutely need to be there, then we felt comfortable chopping them."

The implication is that his reference to "the Andalusian tribes/ setting the lay of Nebraska alight" absolutely needed to be in the new album's "Calamity Song." Minimalism is a relative concept, and Meloy's lyrics continue to come from a poet's pen.

The poetry extends to the Decemberists' refined ensemble playing. Nobody showboats in this band, including the Very Special Guests who joined the farmland recording sessions. R.E.M.'s Peter Buck plays on three of the 10 tracks, and backing vocals by Americana icon Gillian Welch weave a golden thread through most of the album.

"We knew we wanted to get [from Welch] as much time as she could afford," Meloy said. "That was one of the concepts -- we really wanted to have a strong female voice doing harmonies."

Welch isn't joining the Decemberists on tour, where the vital harmonist role is being filled by fiddler/vocalist Sara Watkins, of dormant acoustic-roots trio Nickel Creek. "I desperately want to hear another Gillian Welch record, so I don't want to be a further distraction from that," Meloy said.

Anyone already anticipating another Decemberists record could be in for a long wait. Meloy hinted at projects that are "maybe not music-related or not Decemberists-related," including "Wildwood," a series of children's novels he's working on with his wife, illustrator Carson Ellis.

"We've been around for 10 years, and we've put out something almost every year -- be it an album or an EP -- and we've toured a lot. I think we deserve a little bit of a break.

"That said, Gillian Welch hasn't released a record in, like, seven years, but nobody would say she's on hiatus. I think we can stand to take a little bit more time between records now, just to explore other things."