This spring sees Half Shadow return with Wind Inside, a brand new four-song EP to be released via Antiquated Future Records, and Carsten again evolves their craft to further probe into life’s ambiguities, be they earthy or ethereal. Living up to the project name, these are songs which exist between light and dark, not in a crepuscular sense but rather embracing both simultaneously. Personal experience made cryptic by shadows of grief, or nocturnal poems which glow like dreams.

Lead single ‘Fruit’ offers a first glimpse inside, straddling folk, pop and rock sensibilities to evoke a sound full of seasonal change. The fitting backdrop for what is a meditation on personal growth and the patience which is required to embrace its non-linear shape. “This too shall bear fruit,” Carsten sings in the opening lines, “but until then, just as you said / ‘we must all learn to bare the fallow field’.”

Wind Inside will be released on the 6th March via Antiquated Future Records and you can pre-order it now from the Half Shadow Bandcamp page.

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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.

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The sound which emerges is at once intimate and far-reaching, what we described on single ‘Song for the Garden’ as “an uncanny marriage between personal insight and a wider mystical experience.” The mood is right there in the title. An environment quiet and half-lit but also cathedralesque, some latent mystery lurking not only in the shadowy corners but within the flames themselves.

Inspired by the work of surrealist Leonora Carrington, opener ‘Inn of the Dawn Horse’ pitches the listener straight into this world. A track build upon natural textures, Carsten’s delivery remains reflective and hushed. Though against this quiet rises Yaara Valey’s flugelhorn, like some invading force which knocks the track spinning from its natural rhythm into something erratic and odd. “My hollow hand looms, conducting visions unmade, absolute,” Carsten sings in the fitting final line, “and I’m at the root now, I’m at the root somehow / with all your visions echoing inside my little wooden room.”

The record is full of such songs. What Carsten calls “mythopoetic paeans to the domestic uncanny” which, as with Carrington’s paintings, present reality with extra dimensions superimposed. Half Shadow’s songs could be called poems, or perhaps spells or charms, incantations delivered into quiet spaces to summon strange and nameless things. Be this literal, as in ‘In My Room (A Creature Approaches)’ (“in my room,” Carsten sings, “a creature / a hidden creature / approaches”), or more oblique, as with tracks like ‘The Very Eye of the Night’ or ‘I Practice Dying (in the Spare Room)’.

Today sees the release of a brand new video for another such track, ‘A Full Day Spent (Between the Worlds)’. The song was born of a chance encounter, originating from a piece of text found on scrap paper at the back of a draw and evolving into what Cartsen calls a “mysterious travelogue into the unknown.”  A recorded memento of a journey into a space eerie and pastoral. The video employs medieval imagery to capture this bucolic mood, though its wry tone and green-screen backdrops adds an uncanny edge once more, and feeds into the central question of the record itself. “How does one find themselves in the house,” Carsten asks in the closing lines, “when on every door comes a ceaseless knocking that refuses to stop?”

At Home With My Candles is out now via Bud Tapes, Dove Cove Records and Illusion Florist Records and you can grab it from the Half Shadow Bandcamp page.

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Not that the subject matter necessarily suggests a more expansive sound. A joint release between Bud Tapes, Dove Cove Records and Illusion Florist Records, At Home With My Candles was recorded during quarantine, and as such directs its attention toward the ordinary/odd duality so often found behind closed doors. “An album of mythopoetic paeans to the domestic uncanny,” as the press release puts it. “The mysterious and unseen worlds experienced at home.” But to have such a cloistered record push into the largest and most encompassing sound yet feels entirely fitting for Half Shadow, and indeed the logical progression of its explorations of inner worlds.

Lead single ‘Song for the Garden’ serves as an introduction to this newly expansive style. With the plucked acoustic guitar and reverb-laden synth supported by Yaara Valey‘s flugelhorn, the song offers something lush and rhythmic to celebrate the growth beyond a home’s walls. These conditions prove fertile ground for  Half Shadow’s poetic sensibilities too, the rich sound wrapping around Carten’s vocals and lifting them to the the fore, an uncanny marriage between personal insight and a wider mystical experience.

I watch the poppies bloom
weeping evening blue
mineral bright water
effortless dew
I sleep with you… at the root

At Home With My Candles comes out on the 8th April via Bud Tapes, Dove Cove Records and Illusion Florist Records. You can pre-order it now from the Half Shadow Bandcamp page.

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