With the release of his latest album, “Post-War,” M Ward finds himself in a position similar to Calvin Coolidge. After Coolidge signed the Treaty of Versailles, Congress rejected it and, in a way, planted the seeds of disenchantment that would bring about the second World War.

“I’m sort of in limbo at the moment,” Matt Ward says. “I’ve got dual citizenship now I guess.”

Actually, given a touring regimen that recently sent him across Europe, America and Australia, Ward spends as much time on the road as anywhere, but in the wake of completing the recording of his new album, he recently purchased property on the Seacoast.

“I got a house in New Hampshire, but I’m still in Portland (Oregon), so I’ve got two houses now. I was spending a lot of time on the West Coast and the East Coast. It makes things a lot easier to be on both coasts.”

His touring band is made up of people from his old home, with producer Mike Coykendall, drummer Jordan Hudson, and Adam Selzer and Rachel Blumberg from the band Norfolk and Western. Both Blumberg and Hudson play drums on the tour, a technique that was central to the creation of “Post-War.”

“I wanted the new record to go against the sounds from the old records, I wanted it to be more grounded,” Ward says. “I wanted to try more experiments with percussion, so I had the two drummers that I’ve been working with off and on for the past few years in Portland and put them in the same room together and it helped give the record a unified sound.”

The results are less precious than some of Ward’s earlier solo efforts. The emphasis now is on being able to present his songs to a large hall full of people, rather than a hushed coffee shop audience.

“I wanted to have something that was bolder and less floaty,” Ward muses. “The best way I can describe it is that I wanted the shapes to be larger and to be recognizable from a distance instead of always having to require the audience to come so close.”

While some of the techniques he used in creating the new record were different, the process by which he approaches each album has remained consistent since he began performing solo.

“All the records are made in pretty much the same way, which is me going back to the 4-track tapes I’ve been making since I was 16 and trying to create order out of chaos and trying to fit songs next to each other that seem to belong with each other,” Ward says. “I’m really happy with how it turned out. I’m glad that we were all able to go out on a limb and try something new.”

When most people look at the track listing on the back of the new CD, it seems as though the songs are grouped into suites, but Ward claims that was the doing of the designer and the choices were completely out of his hands. How people listen to the record and comprehend it is something that Ward lets his listeners have their own way with.

“That’s open to interpretation. The last song on the record is definitely meant to be an afterword, but the other songs are all meant to go together. For me, when I’m mastering and when I’m sequencing them, everything is by design. Different people are creating different interpretations. I think that the way that those songs are broken up on the back of the record, that’s the way that my friend who does all my artwork heard the punctuation of the record.”

Ward has stuck with Chapel Hill’s Merge Records for this new album and doesn’t see that a jump to a major label makes much sense in the industry’s current climate. The label gets his album into stores in every town where he plays and many he doesn’t, and their Web presence works as well as any larger corporate entity while carrying a definite hip cache. “They provide just financial and emotional support, they give you lots of room,” Ward says. “And I love Merge, they’re awesome. I have no desire to leave Merge, I couldn’t really ask for anything better. I like that their sound is not defined and it feels like family.”

He’s been busy expanding his own musical family with plenty of other efforts, as well. After having produced Jenny Lewis’ solo record last year, he’s taking a similar role with Carlos Forster, a songwriter from San Francisco with whom he’s been friends since their days growing up in San Luis Obispo.

Ward has also been doing soundtrack work. He appears in Martin Hynes’ forthcoming film “The Go-Getter” and composed the music for it. He also worked with Norah Jones on songs for Ethan Hawke’s next film.

“There’s going to be some different movie music coming out next year that I’m excited about,” Ward says. “It keeps you on your toes. It keeps things interesting. It’s a collaboration between myself and the film director and it was a new experience for me. You’re already given the images, and luckily for me, a lot of the images had abstractions. It makes it easier for me to work with a cross between concrete and abstract instead of one or the other. It leaves you some room to dream.”

As far as spending time on the road, Ward finds it pretty satisfying when he can fly overseas and find the first two nights of his tour sold out in the capital of England. “London audiences have always been really great and are some of the best in the world for me. I can’t really understand why that happens,” Ward shrugs. “I think part of it is the support I get from these various record companies.” Backing from Merge in the U.S. and from Matador overseas allows Ward to “stay focused on the music and the set lists.”

Since his audience has seemed more than willing to go along for the ride wherever Ward wishes to take them, maybe his future downtime will find him bringing a taste of the Seacoast to his next album. Musicians around these parts are always ready for a call to arms.