On a sunny Texas Saturday in the middle of March, Will Sheff and his Austin-based band Okkervil River took to a tiny platform—maybe eight inches off the ground—standing beneath a tent. It was a makeshift venue, one of many erected during the week of the annual SXSW music festival. I think of it like an old-time tent revival, a particularly fitting image.

Bruce Wayne Campbell sits alone in his room in the Chelsea Hotel on Okkervil River’s latest record. He begs in one lyric to “Kill the morning/Just let it die.” It may be the most plaintive moment on The Stand Ins. The listener gets the sense that all of the characters on the latest offering from Will Sheff and his band—the emotionless porn star, the addicted former rocker, the third-generation American iconic family—would be just as pleased to see the day, and this life, quietly slip away. They are a cast of mannequins—the leftover vestiges of hope, prosperity, and love—and they are here to chart the path from the latter to the former. Okkervil River’s profile increased substantially with the release of The Stage Names last year. The Austin, Texas band, often referred to as “literate rockers,” originally intended it to be a double album. Now comes what would have been the second half of that record. An argument can certainly be made that Sheff saved the best for last. Standout tracks on The Stand Ins include “Lost Coastlines,” which features a shared vocal with creative collaborator and former band member Jonathan Meiburg; the long-winded narrative on “Singer Songwriter”; and the aforementioned death contemplation “Bruce Wayne Campbell Interviewed on the Roof of the Chelsea Hotel.” The tag “literate rockers” may be a death knell in a country that seems to celebrate ignorance of late, but The Stand Ins may hopefully be enough to make others aspire.