On April 27th, ATO Records will release Okkervil River’s In The Rainbow Rain, the group’s most immediate – and meaningful – album to date. On it, bandleader Will Sheff makes a startling left turn from the their critically-lauded and inward-looking 2016 album Away, crafting an exuberant declaration of hope. In place of Away’s somber strings and acoustic textures, In the Rainbow Rain is full of dazzling color, spattered with starbursts of electric guitar, big blooms of synth, and a chorus of backing vocals. It’s a buoyant and playful record, but also open and emotionally vulnerable.

Behind his thick lenses, the head of Okkervil river is a thinker, who has led his group on a meandering course. For Away (2016), Will Sheff started with the mournful Okkervil River R.I.P, the better to announce his return. This is a group that he had left in order to renew himself. For this ninth work, oddly optimistic, the songwriter didn’t take long to find inspiration. Touring America for Away, with the help of the election campaign period, Sheff turns out tracks part way between precious folk (How It Is), loquacious folk (External Actor), delicate pop (Pulled Up The Ribbon), more sombre pop talking about his tracheotomy and other better-known numbers like the one by Mary Wells (Famous Tracheotomy), which are full of stories as painful as they are direct. Mixed by Shawn Everett, In The Rainbow Rain seems to be the positive to Away’s negative. It’s a highlight of their discography.  – Charlotte Saintoin