Described as “the latest cluster of healing gems” from Portland, Oregon’s Half Shadow on Bud Tapes, 5 New Songs of Half Shadow sees Jesse Carsten push his experimental brand of folk in new directions. For those unfamiliar, “Half Shadow’s songs could be called poems,” as we wrote of 2022’s At Home With My Candles, “or perhaps spells or charms, incantations delivered into quiet spaces to summon strange and nameless things.” The new EP is an evolution of this style, tending towards a more minimal, succinct sound while maintaining the project’s spirit. Where introspection is matched with an outward gaze, aligning the human interior with vast forces of nature and time.
The EP emerged from a course Carsten took with Phil Elverum via School of Song, with each track a response to a writing prompt. These origins are apparent in the sound itself. The sense of an artist stepping beyond their desire to rework and overthink, not to mention drawing oblique lines between seemingly unconnected things so get at some deeper level of meaning.
Opening track and lead single ‘Horizon’ is the ideal introduction to the release. An intimate folk song embedded in the natural world via layers of field recordings, the single explores the remedial qualities of the ocean in all of their nuanced diversity. From the lapping calm of the opening minutes to the lung cleansing shore mists of the Pacific Northwest, as well as the enlivening force inherent within the view of a far-off horizon, and of course the rolling power of the waves. In this way, the song could be viewed as a journey out into the water. A paddle through the shallows, the cool rising to your waist, and eventually a passage out into the breakers as the sound rises into a rejuvenating climax of crashes and swells.
