"and with the spring's hello / I'm lost in a trance gazing / at the open window / the curtain's gentle blow / my lover's objects throughout the room / arranged in patterns on the dark dresser wood..."
The deeply wood grained folk rock psychedelia of "Fruit" by Half Shadow, the mysterious moniker of Portland’s Jesse Carsten, is something to behold while you are under it's trippy spell, hypnotized and floating. While listening, absorbing the percussive tribalism that Carsten is leaning against with his voice stacked like books, books of poetry of course. Loving the sinewy acoustic guitar, the ringing of an instrument I cannot identify and the meditative nature here. Upon first, second and third listens do I even know what Carsten is talking about, hell no but I am attracted to the way he says what he says. Upon my fourth listen I realized that "Fruit" could have been a Led Zeppelin track with it's poetry written by John Ashbery. I love this, the sense of a kind of personal mysticism, the chance to hold someone's lexical gems, some scuffed, some shiny and reflective and allowing them to seep inside and renew forgotten memories and stir up future thoughts, inspirations.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
LINER NOTES (excerpted / bracketed) do in fact reveal that "Fruit" in it's embryonic state was, in fact, a poem as opposed to a lyric and that makes such perfect sense- SPOILERS below so I suggest you listen to "Fruit", ripe and juicy for your own interpretation before reading and such bracketed 'liner notes'.
READ: [This sung poem details a winter of coping through mental illness, crouching by the “hearth aglow,” to envision the return of light, self-love and the warm trance of Spring. Intimate images of real life process, and the archetypal poetry of loss, are woven throughout. We witness a lover leaving in pained, twilight haste, disappearing into a dreamlike darkness; or an adored, uncaring face turned away, dithered in deserts of time. There is a sense of deep estrangement and doubt here, but also rebirth, and the rising out of personal underworlds. A bright red juice seeping from the springtide berry.]
This amazingly track is just one glimpse of Half Shadow's upcoming EP:
[Appearing courtesy of Portland’s Antiquated Future Records in March 2026, Half Shadow’s newest offering—an EP of four concise, dream-lit songs!]
-Robb Donker Curtius
LYRICS
this too shall bear fruit
but until then, just as you said
"we must all learn to bare the fallow field,"
and wear it as our own clothes
and when the wind is cold, brutal,
harrowed we keep the hearth aglow
and seal its warmth
within the silence of our
weather-worn bodies
and with the spring's hello
I'm lost in a trance gazing
at the open window
the curtain's gentle blow
my lover's objects throughout the room
arranged in patterns on the dark dresser wood
I'm mad for the sight
and I eat the image whole
roll it around
on my ancient tongue
O glory to the peaches
and the plums in the kitchen
still rotting in the sun
time and years and photographs
spilling dust
and the house will be gone
strange idiot empty momentary grace of this
it tastes like,
it tastes like
effortlessness
The Chicken Wheel will take you to the AP Go Fund Me- and any amount is so appreciated!
https://antiquatedfuture.bandcamp.com/album/wind-inside
https://www.instagram.com/half___shadow/
https://www.facebook.com/halfshadowband/
For the past thirteen years Half Shadow, the midnight-blue songwriting moniker of Portland’s Jesse Carsten, has been unfurling an enigmatic, windswept music: equal parts earthen folk, supernatural rock and roll, and primal pop experiment. Carsten creates joyful, eclectic song-collages that embrace the experimental singer-songwriter tradition of the Pacific Northwest; enfolding everything from abstract finger-picked poems to heart-tugged acapella treaties and drone-soaked incantations. As one critic has commented, the project "has the rare distinction of sounding very little like anything else." Blending influences as diverse as Mount Eerie, Robbie Basho, Brigitte Fontaine, Sade, and Joni Mitchell, the music is as much art as it is poetry, as melodic as it is exploratory, as heartfelt as it is otherworldly.
With a rife basket of records, EPs, and countless cassette releases to the project’s credit, Half Shadow still feels fresh and mercurial—this is music made in celebration of life, loss, poetry, synchronicity and the pervasive mystery that surrounds us. Carsten’s songs image dream narratives, plummet down highways of memory, invoke the ecstasies and injures of fraught loving, and express the animistic presences alive in the landscape and in our own psychic spaces.
Carsten, also a poet, is known as a fearless lyricist, taking creative risks that others might not venture. Half Shadow’s lines strike with a precise abandon, carving lyrics as moving as “and all these precious bruises so carefully admired / the tender blue stains of desire / you left upon my abandoned hide.” These are poetic visions of deep ache and wonder, painted in the language of spiraling, starlight hues.
Half Shadow’s performances—alternatively solo or full-banded—are recognized as evocative, immersive events, and have inspired a passionate if humble following in the Northwest. Carsten’s shows often expand beyond the commonplace—incorporating spoken word, question and answer sessions, and performance art moments amongst Half Shadow’s intimate repertory of songs. The Portland Mercury has praised Carsten’s concerts as “invariably powerful, full of wonder and unlike anything else." Half Shadow has shared the stage with a variety of indie rock’s tenderest luminaries, including Porches, Frankie Cosmos, Karl Blau, Black Belt Eagle Scout, Mega Bog, and Juan Wauters, among others.
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 curious undertaking.
"we must all learn to bare the fallow field,"
and wear it as our own clothes
and when the wind is cold, brutal,
harrowed we keep the hearth aglow
and seal its warmth
within the silence of our
weather-worn bodies
and with the spring's hello
I'm lost in a trance gazing
at the open window
the curtain's gentle blow
my lover's objects throughout the room
arranged in patterns on the dark dresser wood
I'm mad for the sight
and I eat the image whole
roll it around
on my ancient tongue
O glory to the peaches
and the plums in the kitchen
still rotting in the sun
time and years and photographs
spilling dust
and the house will be gone
strange idiot empty momentary grace of this
it tastes like,
it tastes like
effortlessness
The Chicken Wheel will take you to the AP Go Fund Me- and any amount is so appreciated!
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM
https://antiquatedfuture.bandcamp.com/album/wind-inside
https://www.instagram.com/half___shadow/
https://www.facebook.com/halfshadowband/
For the past thirteen years Half Shadow, the midnight-blue songwriting moniker of Portland’s Jesse Carsten, has been unfurling an enigmatic, windswept music: equal parts earthen folk, supernatural rock and roll, and primal pop experiment. Carsten creates joyful, eclectic song-collages that embrace the experimental singer-songwriter tradition of the Pacific Northwest; enfolding everything from abstract finger-picked poems to heart-tugged acapella treaties and drone-soaked incantations. As one critic has commented, the project "has the rare distinction of sounding very little like anything else." Blending influences as diverse as Mount Eerie, Robbie Basho, Brigitte Fontaine, Sade, and Joni Mitchell, the music is as much art as it is poetry, as melodic as it is exploratory, as heartfelt as it is otherworldly.
With a rife basket of records, EPs, and countless cassette releases to the project’s credit, Half Shadow still feels fresh and mercurial—this is music made in celebration of life, loss, poetry, synchronicity and the pervasive mystery that surrounds us. Carsten’s songs image dream narratives, plummet down highways of memory, invoke the ecstasies and injures of fraught loving, and express the animistic presences alive in the landscape and in our own psychic spaces.
Carsten, also a poet, is known as a fearless lyricist, taking creative risks that others might not venture. Half Shadow’s lines strike with a precise abandon, carving lyrics as moving as “and all these precious bruises so carefully admired / the tender blue stains of desire / you left upon my abandoned hide.” These are poetic visions of deep ache and wonder, painted in the language of spiraling, starlight hues.
Half Shadow’s performances—alternatively solo or full-banded—are recognized as evocative, immersive events, and have inspired a passionate if humble following in the Northwest. Carsten’s shows often expand beyond the commonplace—incorporating spoken word, question and answer sessions, and performance art moments amongst Half Shadow’s intimate repertory of songs. The Portland Mercury has praised Carsten’s concerts as “invariably powerful, full of wonder and unlike anything else." Half Shadow has shared the stage with a variety of indie rock’s tenderest luminaries, including Porches, Frankie Cosmos, Karl Blau, Black Belt Eagle Scout, Mega Bog, and Juan Wauters, among others.
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 curious undertaking.
Half Shadow, singer songwriter / poet / musician, Portland's Jesse Carsten, Antiquated Future Records, upcoming EP, meditative, deeply rooted folk, rustic, tribal, folk rock, indie folk, "Fruit",
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