Wind Inside by Half Shadow
Release Date: Friday, March 6, 2026
Antiquated Future Records
For the past thirteen years Half Shadow, the 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. This is music made in celebration of life, synchronicity and the pervasive mystery that surrounds us. Half Shadow’s newest EP Wind Inside continues the project’s work, enclosing four new dream-lit songs, which are at once searching, finger-picked poems, and bare-skinned declarations of personal growth. Full of intimate images of real life process, and the archetypal poetry of grief, this brief recording—also Half Shadow’s first 7” record—still echoes with depth, begging for repeat listens across the seasons.
RIYL: Mount Eerie, Marisa Nadler, Arthur Russell, Aldous Harding, Little Wings
"Has the rare distinction of...[sounding] very little like anything else." Alt 77
“Half Shadow’s songs could be called poems or perhaps spells or charms, incantations delivered into quiet spaces to summon strange and nameless
things... aligning the human interior with vast forces of nature and time.”
Various Small Flames
"Invariably powerful [and] full of wonder." Portland Mercury
"At Home with My Candles calls on the listener to inquire within themselves,
in their secret, shy self, what their true vision consists of;
what their soul is really made of.” Tome to the Weather Machine
in their secret, shy self, what their true vision consists of;
what their soul is really made of.” Tome to the Weather Machine
Appearing courtesy of Portland’s Antiquated Future Records in March 2026, Half Shadow’s newest offering—an EP of four concise, dream-lit songs—opens with these soft, chanted phrases: “call me back behind your whispering curtain / just for the hour’s golden phase / I want to watch your hands divine the fretboard / coaxing penumbras from their hiding place.” Sung over echoing guitar, glittering piano, and a chorale of silvery voices, we’re quietly beckoned into a veiled space, brimming with desire, grief, and a hard-won, wind-bitten transcendence. Wind Inside bears these contrasts luminously, ripening with songs of mystery, longing, and the cyclical churn of time.
Like bright canticles plucked from the dark hours, these tunes—hanging somewhere between gentle, experimental folk, and an ecstatic rock and roll—are at once searching, finger-picked poems, and bare-skinned declarations of personal growth. “This too shall bear fruit / but until then, just as you said / we must all learn to bear the fallow field,” intones Jesse Carsten—Half Shadow’s sole songwriter/producer—on the song “Fruit.” 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.
Wind here is both the soft, consoling breeze, as well as a powerful awakening force that compels us to witness “something unkillable,” in nature that “unfurls its simple grandeur, its good life.” These songs convey how we too are as beautiful, broken, and formidable as landscape, exquisitely barren, and infinitely fecund. Wind Inside, though brief, thunders with this level of depth and wonder, urging listeners into a range of elemental emotionality that’s remained Half Shadow’s enduring poetic trademark for the past thirteen years. With no song breaking the three minute mark, this cohesive assemblage of wind-music begs for repeat listens, and, as Half Shadow’s first seven inch record, continued whirls on the turntable across the seasons.
Half Shadow Bio
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.