Half Shadow

For the better part of a decade Half Shadow, the midnight-blue songwriting moniker of Portland’s Jesse Carsten, has been unfurling an enigmatic, windswept music: equal parts earthen folk and cosmic rock and roll, with a primal pop experimentalism seeping from the edges. Wedding an expansive, transcendent poetics to a fiercely home-spun aesthetic, Carsten creates joyful, eclectic, song-collages that embrace the experimental singer-songwriter tradition of the Pacific Northwest while enfolding an array of more canonical art-voicings. Half Shadow’s songs range from abstract finger-picked poems to heart-tugged acapella treaties and repetitive art-rock incantations. Genres blend with a subtly psychedelic grace, with Carsten’s gentle voice delivering dream-laden lyrics always at the center of the sound. Half Shadow’s performances—joining quiet song-spinning with performance art, poetry recitation, and instrumental guitar improvisations—are recognized as strange, dazzling, immersive events, inspiring a passionate following in the Northwest. The Portland Mercury has praised Carsten’s shows as “invariably powerful, full of wonder, and unlike anything else." Following a string of cassette and CD-R releases on smaller labels, Carsten birthed the first fully fledged Half Shadow LP in 2019, Dream Weather Its Electric Song, which was hailed by Antiquated Future as “a carefully thought-out work…of poetic devotionals to the natural world, the subconscious, other realms.” The record was celebrated for its ability to work tangible magic: as Queen City Sounds put it, Dream Weather deconstructs “familiar songwriting styles, bringing the logical mind into alternate pathways of operating.” Carsten's dense, non-linear and imaginative lyricism place him in the company of similar world-expanding poet-songwriters such as Mega Bog's Erin Birgy, Yves Jarvis, and Ruth Garbus. Having been called “one of Portland’s best kept secrets,” it is paradoxically Half Shadow’s mystery-inspired, DIY ethos that spirits Carsten’s ever-evolving project out of the home-recordist’s cave and onto more illuminated stages. When it does, Half Shadow is ready to wrap listeners in the dark, sparkling hues and mossy undergrowth that have become the poetic trademark of this singular undertaking. Half Shadow’s third LP At Home With My Candles is due out April 2022 via Bud Tapes and Dove Cove Records.