Eli Carvajal - 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’.

The storytelling on this collection begins with fourth album Eat Shiitake Now, which was created in real-time, chronological order during his first year living in Tokyo, Japan in the wake of the whirlwind marriage that brought him there (only to end nine months into his stay). Over this time, he taught English, singing and songwriting in different schools around the city, recording the album in his bedroom in Higashikitazawa, Tokyo, overlooking Mount Fuji.

Released in 2024, that album captured the realness of every moment in stark detail. Eyen Forever acts as the reflective full-stop to this period of his life, telling stories from his final year in Japan: looking back at what was, dwelling on another short-lived relationship and drawing parallels to his twin’s battles with mental health and Carvajal’s own powerlessness to help.

Back in the UK and closing the page on his twenties, this album is a love letter to his time in Japan, a farewell, filled with gratitude. While making contact with the profound, the music is intimate. As a listener you are invited into close proximity with Carvajal's experiences, like eavesdropping on a personal monologue.
He delves into his own pain, joy and longing with a stark vulnerability and humour as he creates music as frail and strong as the human condition. There are layers of meaning within every line of his poetic lyrics that mean something specific and special to him, but can also be interpreted in comforting ways by listeners. If you care about lyrics coming from an honest and authentic place (brimming with humanity), Eyen Forever is your next favourite album.

While this is Carvajal's personal story, the Tokyo location is as much the main character as he is, seeping into every idea and every note on the record. Hear it in the thunder from a typhoon that broke out during the recording of ‘New Year’ and ‘Cinnabon Odori Day’.

‘Gemini III’ was written on his bike as Carvajal broke into tears whilst riding across Tokyo, en route to teach junior high school kids about Canada (a place he has never visited) before they went on a field trip there. They sang ‘O Canada’ to him as he arrived. This unexplained burst of uncontrollable emotion shows a single person overwhelmed by the beauty and enormity of the world, grounded by the relationships of those around them.

This explains Eyen Forever perfectly.