[2] The album was recorded in 2016 at Electric Lady Studios in New York City and Panoramic House in West Marin with producer Paul Butler, a member of the band The Bees.

By the end of 2014, Hurray for the Riff Raff had managed to gain a wider audience following the successes of Small Town Heroes.

Rather than immediately follow it up quickly by recording another album, frontperson Alynda Mariposa Segarra used the opportunity to travel back to their ancestral homelands in Puerto Rico and reconnect with their roots.

After returning from their travels, Segarra and the rest of the band decided to relocate from New Orleans to Nashville in order to start writing the new album.

[6] The band asked Paul Butler to produce the album, based on his work with British soul singer Michael Kiwanuka.

Butler was hired with the aim to recapture the same sound he had brought to Kirwanuka's albums and combine it with the various musical influences of the places Segarra had visited.

To accomplish the task an ensemble of musicians were brought in, including percussionist Juan-Carlos Chaurand and Devendra Banhart's drummer Gregory Rogove.

If that sounds as if it’s a recipe for unmitigated worthiness, be assured that folk melodies and wild-hearted Latin beats play as big a role as Segarra’s flamethrower polemics"[13] Writing for The Independent, Andy Gill claimed, "[Segarra] effectively expands the notion of Americana to accommodate another cultural strain alongside the usual blues and country influences.

‘Living in The City’ is a fun doo-wop number while the title track is a sultry slice of mid-1980s Tom Waits-ian southern gothic.

"[16] Kitty Empire also praised the album in a five-star review for The Observer: "The Navigator might be full of site-specific anger and yearning, but like its predecessors, it is incredibly easy on the ear.

"[17] In a review for Pitchfork, contributor Matthew Ismael Ruiz commended the album too, commenting that "The Navigator is ostensibly a rock’n’roll record, but it expands Segarra’s palette beyond the folk/country/blues lane she’s thus far occupied.

"[19] Laura Snapes' article for Uncut also related the album to the contemporary political climate: "Segarra is skilled at identifying the shifting goalposts that immigrants have to live by, and staring past them.