Number 1 Folk Album on Bandcamp the day it was released. Features Thor Harris of Swans, Sheartwater, Xiu Xiu. El Capitán is Will Johnson’s 7th studio album, released less than a year after Wire Mountain. While this is a collection of songs written on the road, they’re given a polished studio treatment, albeit a bit more subdued and restrained than Wire Mountain. El Capitán is Johnson’s second album with the carefully-curated Austin label Keeled Scales and his third recorded with Britton Beisenherz at his Austin studio Ramble Creek Recording. Here’s Will Johnson with how the album came together: This new record started years ago at a friend’s dining room table in Portland, building up on long desert drives, in hotel bathrooms, at casino bars, and on these regular runs. Over years, the songs mortared themselves together into something I thought fit together. Some are now quite old, and a couple are pandemic-new. It feels like we’re at the mercy of nature now more than ever, and the quietude of this patch of time made sense to document them and finally get them out. I took a hundred-dollar Stella guitar to my friend, Britton’s, and we spent three days, distanced, building something. We let go of old habits, peeled things back, and tracked it all to a Tascam 388. We ate tacos, drank Tecate and found happiness in the act of moving again in the early summer heat. There’s tape hiss, and there are imperfections. Thor Harris and Lindsey Verrill contributed beautifully from afar.