Carvajal, Eli - Eyen Forever

With his fifth album, Eyen Forever, London-based singer-songwriter, Eli Carvajal, completes a two-album chronicle of love, loss and rebirth from a time living in Japan.

It is a deeply introspective work drawing on the classic singer-songwriter poetics of Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell and the wide-eyed intimacy of Adrianne Lenker, Mount Eerie and Bill Callahan. With minimal embellishments, these contemplative songs focus on strummed guitar melodies and Carvajal’s warm blanket of a voice.

Musically, the familiar fare has a strange twist coming from Carvajal's unorthodox playing style. He plays left-handed with an upside-down right-handed guitar, using exclusively open tunings. This creates a spacious sound, with drone notes continuously ringing around Carvajal’s lyrics.

The songs don’t follow verse-chorus-verse song structures, instead unfolding organically along a unifying melody/harmony, unfurling laterally like any good journey. It has a defined destination but the route can throw in surprises. He refers to his writing style as ‘next-door to storytelling’.

RIYL: Adrianne Lenker, Mount Eerie and Bill Callahan