Eli August follows up his "Let this House Burn Slowly" full length with a beautifully packaged ep entitled "The Bottom of the Sea".
Eli continues to do what he excels at: crafting striking and melancholic folk songs carried by his distinctive voice. Of the six tracks on "The Bottom of the Sea" two are the clear standouts:
"Waves" manages to build a creepy background chant into a disharmony that wormed its way into my head.
And "Steady" which musically covers familiar Eli August territory but marries it to a positive mindset that is at odds with much of his recorded work. Two excellent pieces.
My quibble here is that Eli rises best when he has a bit more instrumentation to round out the production, it seems to bring out the striving in his voice that much more. As such I hope to hear the background musicians brought up a bit in future productions, when they're present on this set they're too buried.
