B-Side Guys

Distance shapes perspective. Perhaps this explains why Eli Carvajal’s “Stretch Marks,” recorded in a Higashikitazawa bedroom with Mount Fuji visible through the window, achieves such remarkable emotional clarity. Physical displacement from London to Tokyo has granted Carvajal unique vantage points on intimate territories—creating folk music that transforms bodily scars into profound metaphorical terrain.

The track’s opening establishes immediate intimacy through instrumental restraint. Carvajal’s guitar work provides gentle rhythmic foundation without overshadowing the vocal narrative. Most striking is how the production incorporates environmental elements—distant cicadas audible beneath the composition create subtle sonic texture while reinforcing the song’s central theme of natural processes and markings.

What elevates “Stretch Marks” beyond conventional singer-songwriter fare is its unflinching examination of body-as-narrative. The opening lines “Stretch marks/Across my back/People love to ask/Shark attack” convey both physical vulnerability and the discomfort of external scrutiny. This focus on corporeal evidence extends throughout, with lines like “I’m sawn in half/Put your fingers there/Sew me whole again” transforming physical sensation into spiritual plea.

Carvajal demonstrates particular skill in navigating between concrete imagery and metaphorical significance. When singing “Blank sky/Fields of Highbury/I drew a line on you/You drew a line on me,” specific London geography becomes canvas for broader exploration of boundaries and their consequences. Similarly, the observation that “My stretch marks/Run the distance of/Your moles and your freckles” renders physical imperfections as celestial cartography—body markings becoming constellations.

The composition’s power culminates in its devastating conclusion: “This was/Never an honest love/All along it was/Mythological.” Here Carvajal strips away romantic projection, revealing the essential fiction at the core of idealized connection. This recognition arrives not with bitterness but with quiet resignation—the calm acknowledgment of love’s imaginative dimensions.

As Carvajal’s second single of 2025, preceding a full album and marking the transition from Tokyo back to London, “Stretch Marks” suggests an artist capable of transforming geographical and emotional transitions into song. The bedroom recording approach serves the material perfectly, creating documentary intimacy that enhances the lyrical excavation of private territories.

For listeners seeking folk music that treats vulnerability as strength rather than weakness, Carvajal offers a thoughtful contribution to the tradition of songwriters who find universal resonance in their most personal geographies.