Okkervil River’s In The Rainbow Rain, is an immediate, and meaningful album. On it, bandleader Will Sheff makes a startling left turn from 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. Sheff says, “I wanted to make a record where a sense of kindness felt encoded into the music.”