Hello reader,
How are you today?
Today, we’re excited to talk about another artist making some great music: Far Caspian. The group is the moniker of Irish musician Joel Johnston.
As Far Caspian, Johnson has released a pair of studio albums – Ways To Get Out (2021) and The Last Remaining Light (2023) – as well as the following EPs: Demos (2015), Between Days (2018), The Heights (2019), and Far Caspian on Audiotree Live (2024).
In late 2023, Johnson opened his own recording studio in Leeds, England, where he produces and mixes for several UK-based acts. His positive experiences working with other artists inspired him to return to Far Caspian and create new music. The resulting album, entitled Autofiction, is out July 25 via his own Tiny Library Records.
According to the album’s press release, “While Far Caspian is performed live as a six-piece, Johnston has spent years writing, producing, and recording a full band production for it all on his own, and that began to take a mental toll. With a mounting feeling of stress and pressure, he nearly decided to quit his own project; but after producing albums for Green Gardens and Ellur, Johnston’s spark for Far Caspian reignited. Newly inspired to enjoy the process, he returned to some demos he had started for Autofiction and completed the majority of the album in January 2025.”
Adds Johnson via press release, “After producing Ellur, I was able to just say to myself: ‘I’m going to produce this Far Caspian album now. I’m presenting myself with these demos I’ve had for a while. Let me see what I can do with them as a producer, not as a songwriter.’”
Johnston recorded the album entirely in his studio, producing, mixing, mastering, and playing every instrument heard on it. Johnson wrote the songs with a freeing but straightforward motto: “I’m enjoying this right now, and therefore, it’s good enough.”
That approach led to stellar results, as evidenced by the single “An Outstretched Hand / Rain From Here To Kerry.” We’re excited to put the spotlight on the song. It’s a fantastic five-and-a-half-minute song that takes you on a richly texture sonic journey from start to finish. The song opens with an up-tempo and energetic pairing of guitars and percussion that propels it forward for most of its runtime. It concludes with a brief sonic breakdown and is comparably restrained yet just as emotive in sound. For the album, Johnson drew influences from Broken Social Scene and the Japanese band Supercar, and I can hear a similarly unconventional and ambitious song structure. Johnson makes that approach his own.
Lyrically, the album features some of his most, as the press release describes, “direct, diaristic and literal to date” and that’s very true of this song.
Below, Johnson tells SWT about the inspiration for the song:
“This song ties two scenarios together. ‘An Outstretched Hand’ is just a simple love song about enjoying time in a new relationship and having that feeling that time is always against you because you want to spend it all with the other person. It’s also about a day/night back in 2014 when a group of friends and I went down to Kerry for my friend’s birthday to hike up Carrauntoohil, which is the tallest mountain in Ireland. A rough storm eventually sent us driving 8 hours back home through the night instead. I remember my friend, who drove, asked me to promise not to fall asleep so that he had company the whole way. So, I sat in the passenger seat while the others slept in the back. We were forced into it, but that drive ended up being really special. It felt like one of those moments in life that will always be with you, especially at that younger age when the world feels like it’s in need of exploring.”
“I was trying to pack as much personal nostalgia into the song as possible. In a way, I was trying to make an updated ‘old’ Far Caspian-sounding song with a similar feeling to the first EP but with a more mature approach to the structure/songwriting. I even borrowed the line ‘An outstretched hand on a frostbitten night’ from my friend Ben’s project, Bare Bear, which I played drums on back in 2014—pulling from a similar timeframe that the lyrics are based on.”
“The recording side was the most spur-of-the-moment song on the record; the drums were recorded with the most slung-together setup, with only three mics, but I feel like that helps the charm of the whole thing. The more I play live, the more I want time away from standing in front of the mic and to be able to turn around and enjoy just playing with the boys, so I’ve been writing more instrumentally focused songs. This is definitely one of those, and I can’t wait to be able to play it live and get lost in the instrumental side of things.”
“An Outstretched Hand / Rain From Here To Kerry” follows the previous single, “First Day,” which you can watch the kaleidoscopic music video for below:
You can follow and listen to Far Caspian at the below links:
Instagram: Instagram.com/farcaspian/
Twitter: x.com/farcaspian
Facebook: Facebook.com/FarCaspian/
TikTok: Tiktok.com/@far.caspian
Spotify: Far Caspian on Spotify
Bandcamp: farcaspian.bandcamp.com/
Album Preorder: Preorder Far Caspian’s Autofiction on Tiny Library Records
You can catch Far Caspian at the tour dates below:
September 8 – Dublin, IE – The Grand Social
September 9 – Manchester, UK – Night & Day Cafe
September 11 – London, UK – Scala
September 12 – Bristol, UK – Strange Brew
September 13 – Brighton, UK – Green Door Store
September 17 – Paris, FR – La Maroquinerie
September 18 – Brussels, BE – Botanique Orangerie
September 19 – Amsterdam, NL – Paradiso Tollhuisten
September 22 – Berlin, DE – Silent Green
October 3 – Washington, DC – Union Stage
October 4 – Brooklyn, NY – Music Hall of Williamsburg
October 7 – Chicago, IL – Lincoln Hall
October 8 – Minneapolis, MN – 7th Street Entry
October 10 – Denver, CO – Globe Hall
October 13 – Seattle, WA – Madame Lou’s
October 14 – Portland, OR – Polaris Hall
October 16 – San Francisco, CA – Bimbo’s 365 Club
October 17 – Los Angeles, CA – Echoplex
Joshua is co-founder of Scummy Water Tower. He’s freelanced for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and websites, including: Rolling Stone, The Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, Guitar World, MTV News, Grammy.com, Chicago Magazine, Milwaukee Magazine, MKE Lifestyle, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, A.V. Club, SPIN, Alternative Press, Under the Radar, Paste, PopMatters, American Songwriter, and Relix. You can email him at josh@scummywatertower.com.
