Earlier this month, Welsh rockers Manic Street Preachers released their 14th studio album, The Ultra Vivid Lament. The melancholy pop record was written mostly on piano, a first for guitarist and singer James Dean Bradfield, who believes fate had something to do with it.

'My wife had made friends with this old lady called Margaret and she was just moving into a care home. She's 105 now so she was 103 when she just moved into the care home, and the piano [she owned] was as old as her. She knew my daughter was just starting to learn piano and she knew I was a musician. So she bequeathed the piano to my wife and it arrived just a couple of weeks before lockdown. I thought, "wow, this is serendipity,"' he recalled. 'I started trying to brush up on my piano skills during lockdown because of what had happened with this piano. And I really got into it. 'Orwellian' had been written on the piano so I thought I'll try it again… it changed the way I wrote, gave a bit more space for the words and made things a bit more considered.'

The first singles, 'Orwellian' and 'The Secret He Had Missed', could be seen as pastiches to 'Waterloo'-era Abba, with their upbeat tempos and hammering piano riffs, but it's the 1980s era more generally that provided the inspiration for the whole record. 'We listened to quite a lot of Abba in lockdown. I was going through my record collection and I just realised that all those beautiful records, whether it be some Roxy Music, The Lotus Eaters, Echo and the Bunnymen, Simple Minds, they were all from the 80s. And they all kind of give me a sense of melancholic hope… I wanted to reflect this sadness, but also for the songs to give you the impression that you're kind of turning the corner,' Bradfield said.

Created mostly throughout the darkest days of lockdown, writing for The Ultra Vivid Lament provided Bradfield with his own kind of hope; '[In lockdown] my head wasn't as strong as I thought it was. So I started writing music just for the sake of it, and then when the lyrics started arriving from Nick, thankfully it felt the same as when I wrote my first tune to one of his lyrics when I was 15. That was a godsend to actually know that something still felt the same.'

The Manics' bassist and lyricist Nicky Wire contributed reflective lyrics that, on this occasion, lean more towards personal than political. When asked if the Manics have lost interest in calling out social injustices, Bradfield admitted; 'I can't be the punk boy that I was when I was, you know, 16 or 22. That person isn't here anymore. I might have some of those beliefs. But I just don't think that music would sound convincing out of me at the moment. Inevitably you're going to ebb and flow and change and we just know that.'

The group, completed by drummer Sean Moore, will be playing songs from their new album, as well as older classics, in Edinburgh's Usher Hall (Tuesday 28 September), Dundee's Fat Sams (Wednesday 29 September) and Glasgow's Barrowland Ballroom (Tuesday 5 October) in the Scottish leg of their UK tour. 'We've always played lots in Scotland, just because why wouldn't you? It's an amazing place and the audience is always absolutely brilliant. And that's not always a guarantee, I can tell you,' said Bradfield.

One of his favourite Scottish memories, Bradfield remembered, was his first visit to Glasgow; 'the first time we played in King Tut's in 1991 in Glasgow, that's when I found King's Cafe [his favourite Glasgow cafe] which is just opposite across Sauchiehall Street. It was an amazing experience. It was the first time we'd been given a proper meal by a venue. They gave us burgers and chips and lasagna and chips. I remember it was amazing.'

The tour marks the return of Manic Street Preachers after their longest ever gap between live shows since their formation in 1986. Excitement may be the overarching feeling, but there is some apprehension as well. 'There is a bit of a bittersweet irony there of what makes a good gig. Good gigs are about disrespecting each other's personal space but that's exactly what has made it so hard for music to come back in the age of Covid-19,' Bradfield explained. 'But it feels like that kind of excitement you have in your stomach when you're gonna have a fight after school. The slightly pugilistic nature of it where an audience, especially somewhere like Barrowlands, they say to you, "fucking give us what you got. Otherwise, you're dead meat." They want you to come at them so they can come back at you. And I've missed that.'

Manic Street Preachers, Usher Hall, Edinburgh, Wednesday 28 September; Fat Sam's. Dundee, Thursday 29 September; Barrowland Ballroom, Glasgow, Tuesday 5 October.