She’s a rainbow… and with a slew of carefully chosen guest artists on her new album, she might also count as a rainbow farmer. The acclaimed singer-songwriter Allison Russell is back with her third solo album, “In the Hour of Chaos,” featuring her Rainbow Coalition band and leading off with a song titled “Rainbows,” reflecting her light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel-and-storms worldview. She’s far from the sole source of multiple colors on the new record, though. Russell had never had a featured guest star on one of her efforts until she did a duet with friend Annie Lennox as a one-off. For the new album, she is offsetting the chaos of the world by reinforcing her belief in community, to the extent that there is a featured artist on all but one of the 11 tracks, with guests ranging from Norah Jones to Brittney Spencer to Kashus Culpepper.
It’s difficult to imagine a more outrightly joyful collection than “In the Hour of Chaos,” which nearly counts as a party record, until you scratch past the surface and explore the tensions that are making her do the work to arrive at such a celebratory set. It lives up to its predecessors, “Outside Child” and “The Returner,” which is saying a lot, given how many top 10 lists both of those albums wound up on. Russell spoke with Variety about the new record on the eve of taking off for a tour supporting Sarah McLachlan.
