We chat to Portland based musician HALF SHADOW about his new record 'At Home With My Candles'....
After hearing that Portland, Oregon musician Jesse Carsten (aka Half Shadow) was due to release his 3rd studio album (At Home With My Candles) on April 8th, we wanted to get in touch and chat to him about the making of the album and exactly what went into it. Whilst we were there, we also asked him about his early musical memories, first live gig that he attended, influences and his dream festival lineup. For al of this and much more, read on….
Tell me something that you’ve never told an interviewer about yourself before….
I’m obsessed with the sun, natural wine, Alejandra Pizarnik’s poetry and warm wind.
If you can, please summarise your sound in just one sentence….
Avant-folk-fantasy-earworm-micro-fantasias.
You live in Portland, Oregon, describe the music scene there for me…..
Portland has been a very encouraging place to make music. But it’s also cliquey. If you don’t end up knowing the right bands, you might feel a little disconnected. But it’s sonically diverse: lots of great folk, experimental, and rock music happening. Radio DJs that love the local scene, venues that are open to different sounds, lots of young, young musicians putting together beautiful bands, our friends in the scene taking over booking in different places. I bet things are going to blossom post-pandemic. When I came here it was really different, way, way weirder and just wild spaces to play in, all that’s gone, but…the city is growing up. New opportunities await.
Are there any music venues in the city that deserve a mention for their efforts in keeping live music alive?
They’re all trying hard and doing a good job. But I would say it’s never really venues that keep music alive, it’s always musicians themselves being pushed from within to make their magical sound. That’s the only thing that really keeps everything going.
Tell me about your earliest musical memory. Would you say that you grew up in a musical house?
My father singing is definitely my earliest memory in general, it’s probably the reason I play music. He would sing me Rolling Stones and Beatles songs to help me fall asleep. He would also just sing to himself walking around the house, like making up new songs to old melodies, he still does it, totally unconsciously. It’s great. There was always this melody floating through the air.
What was the first music CD you ever bought and do you still have it?
The first three CD’s I ever had were The Beatles’ Revolver, Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons (I think I can still hum the entire thing under the right circumstances) and then later Radiohead’s OK Computer, which I heard driving in my friend’s parents’ car (very cool parents) and I was like “what is this!?” It’s safe to say that these albums changed my life and tuned my mind to a certain frequency that’s still playing out today.
In what way?
I remember hearing that song that ends Revolver: “Tomorrow Never Knows” which is such a beautiful, hypnotic tape-loop type of song, very experimental and overtly spiritual. It’s a song about meditation, or maybe an LSD trip, or maybe both. But it just fried my mind. I was like “that sound is the sound of what everything should sound like.” It fits how I see reality, as this ever shifting moment of consciousness, which then recedes like ocean waves. That song sounds like a silver ocean opening up.
And Radiohead, gosh, I loved the songs about aliens. I was very into aliens at the time. My parents and I have all had beautiful UFO encounters and it was just like touching a part of reality that I felt so acquainted with and also expressed a figment of reality, or maybe of myth, that deeply resonated with me. Also their tonality, almost classical was at once epic—even baroque—and deeply personal. It also shreds at different points, like on “Paranoid Android” it just rips a hole in time and space with how much it rocks. I loved that. So aggressive, weird, and romantic, I hope I’m getting some of these vibes into my music, too.
Do you remember which band or artist it was that made you want to start writing your own music?
Probably the Beatles. I wrote weird little ditties because of them. But later it was hearing bands from the Pacific Northwest: Mount Eerie, Thanksgiving (Adrian Orange), YACHT, Dear Nora, Karl Blau, Beat Happening, and others that got me excited to make things that were lyrical, personal, but also could experiment with genre and performance in a way that hardly anyone else was doing at the time (early 2000’s). That’s also why I moved to Portland.
What was the first live gig that you attended: who was it, who did you attend with, where was it, and what memories did you take away from the show?
I went to see Weezer at Jones Beach Amphitheatre on Long Island in probably 1999 or 2000. That’s the first one I can remember. Or maybe I went to see the [Grateful] Dead with my dad first, not sure which. Both were these insane, amazing shows. But I think the Weezer show was the first one. I remember just being swept away by the evening springtime sea-air and the huge sound and the wonderful feeling of togetherness. Weezer totally slayed. So intense and romantic and anthemic. Being with my friends and my girlfriend at the time and just being like a human, enjoying. It felt great.
If you were asked to nominate 3 acts to perform as headliners for a major music festival, which 3 would you choose and why? (can be dead or alive – you can’t nominate yourself)
Amazing question. I’m picking all heroes from the other side.
The Sun Ra Arkestra
I’ve seen the Arkestra perform a couple of times and it completely alters reality—Ra is one of the best artists ever to grace planet Earth, and I’d give my left shoe to see him conduct the band, so I think they’d be the main headliner.
Arthur Russell
Arthur Russell playing his disco songs in front of a huge crowd would be so, so exciting. And it’s really his time to shine in the world, now that so many more people love and appreciate his work.
Nina Simone circa her It is Finished record.
Nina’s wildest phase—doing vocal improvs with minimal rhythm backing and lecturing the audience and dancing and stuff, then sitting down at the piano to do the most amazing, gut-wrenching and painful songs. Ugh it would be incredible.
At Home With My Candles is set for release on April 8th 2022, this is your third album to date, aside from the subject matter, does it sound similar to your previous releases?
Yes, and no. I took some big chances making this one. Namely, I decided to avoid minimalism and just embrace every idea that came to me for a song. Consequently it all sounds totally huge, almost orchestral at points. I wanted to capture how home feels so big, enveloping, and overwhelming sometimes. How so much of our lives are lived in these actually palatial emotional, domestic atmospheres. I mean, it feels emotionally huge living in an apartment sometimes. And it feels haunted. Haunted by us. So that’s why I had to go maximal. Also some songs are so intensely transcendent, that I wanted to use the instruments to break through to something godly, to somewhere else. “Moonless (Unmoored)” is probably the most obvious example, the screeching violins and pounding drums feel like they’re burning a hole through reality, and opening a door to elsewhere. Suddenly you’re on the shimmering shore. It’s a dream, but you can feel it.
You recorded the album during quarantine and collaborated with some fabulous musicians who recorded their parts at a distance. Amongst the contributors, there was Yaara Valey, Zach Burba (Iji, Mega Bog, Dear Nora), Jem Marie (The Ghost Ease), Julian Morris (Layperson, Post Moves), did you have to overcome any hurdles as you were forced to work in more of a remote way?
It was actually so wonderful and easy. Everyone was home, ready to record, ready to return emails. To send tracks through. It was absolutely fluid and joyful. I’d get a sax part and just go “wow, this is miraculous.” Slap it in the track and huzzah, beautiful music.
I read that you enlisted the support of Kevin Christopher (Oh Rose, Ancient Pools) for mastering duties, were you able to send the finished product to him to work on or was there a lot of ‘back and forth’ during the process?
I sent Vin the final product and we put it through, I think, just two passes. He’s really a wizard at the controls. In just a day or two he made it glow, and brought out all this subtlety and girth that I wanted. I would drive up on Mount Tabor, a beautiful little mountain here in Portland, and listen to the masters in the car turned way up, in the forest with the windows open, probably disturbing the hikers passing by. It was fun.
Do you think that the album would have sounded different had you NOT have recorded it during lockdown/quarantine? If so, how?
This is a tough question. Yes, probably. Probably more friends would have heard it, if they’d been able to come over to my house. I would’ve gotten more feedback, and it might have disturbed the sanctity of creating it in solitude. Then again, I won’t let something go until it sounds just like it sounds in my head, or as close as I can get it. So, maybe it would be the same.
The songs on ‘At Home With My Candles’ chart the beauty and strangeness that domestic life can conjure – please tell me how you came to theme the album on these lines?
Well, I was really wrestling with being in partnership, living in a house, taking care of the garden. Living a “normal” life. When it’s good, it’s magical. But sometimes I feel strapped in, a little cagey. Those moments I start to wrestle with it. But you can’t avoid living on Earth and being connected to other people. That’s why on “A Full Day Spent (Between the Worlds)” I sing “how does one find themselves in the house / when on every door comes a ceaseless knocking that refuses to stop?” There’s such a tension between what we are called to do in our lives—in the external world—and the quiet, self-care of living in a more grounded way. Often the domestic sphere is the place these two worlds meet. That’s kind of the theme of the record. I had collected songs about the domestic for a few years, and it was suddenly time to make a record of them. I came home from a tour (the last before quarantine) and immediately began recording. I was like, “yes! this is it, songs about home. This is what I need to deal with.”
Aside from recording this album during quarantine, how did your approach to the process differ from the first two records?
I had nice microphones to use, and tried to feel more joy making and mixing it. The first two were emotionally excruciating. While recording ‘At Home’, I worked to reclaim some confidence about doing my very weird, idiosyncratic project. I heard Phil Elverum say something wonderful in a podcast about home recording which really helped me. He said something to the effect of (I’m paraphrasing) “there is something special you can get out of recording by yourself, at home, that you lose recording with a band. Some kind of beautiful, off-kilter weirdness. I like that.” I was like “exactly!” it restored a lot of confidence I had been lacking.
If you were stranded on a desert island for 6 months with unlimited food and water but only 3 records, which 3 would you choose and why?
Dang. That’s tough. Right now I think I’d bring Yves Jarvis’ The Same But By Different Means, Alabaster Deplume’s To Cy and Lee, and probably something to dance to.
I see you use the term DIY a lot when talking about your music, how does this apply to working with other people? In the UK the term ‘DIY’ means ‘Do It Yourself’ which is often linked to doing jobs around the house and assembling flat-pack furniture….
Oh it just means I handle all parts of the process of production and promo etc. when it comes to my project. There’s no one else to do it anyway. When other people work on it, it’s still “me” doing it. Like I’m still directing what I want from them and then adding it to the mix. They also are, for the most part, DIY’ers in that regard. Bud Tapes and Dove Cove Records, who are putting out ‘At Home With My Candles’ are both run by artists who do literally everything themselves. Plus, none of this is made in a studio, on any level, it’s all done at home. I belong to that tradition, do it all yourself, don’t wait on the world to come help you. In the states, that really comes from punk and early punk DIY labels—Discord, K, SST and such. I once sent Ian Mackaye—who founded Discord, Fugazi etc.—a tape in the mail and incredibly he wrote back and encouraged me to keep at my projects and that I was embodying a powerful tradition by doing so. At the time I was making like blown out noise tapes with singing on them and he said something to effect of “this is the punk spirit, don’t lose it.” I’ve never forgotten that.
Your approach to song-writing is very different to what I have heard from other musicians, I’m particularly fascinated in the way that you collect dreams and poeticize them, tell me more about this….
I’m a deep dreamer, meaning I remember and learn from my actual night-time dreams. I take the images, the messages, and turn them into words and sound. “Moonless (Unmoored)” was partly inspired by a dream in which I stopped a massive wave from crashing on a darkened shore. I did this with my mind. I lifted my hand and it froze like glass, still, cold, and silver in the moonlight. I walked up to it and knocked on it, and a door opened in the wall of the wave. Isn’t that just a perfect mysterious image for a song?
I like to think of song-writing as an extension of experimental poetry practice. Meaning it can be anything, any kind of words, any kind of story. There’s such power in just doing the traditional “write a love song” or “write a song of loss.” There’s a long, important history of that. But songwriters aren’t only for that, we can also make new worlds. I’m in the business of doing this, and dreams offer images of a transformed world. A world of healing. I have a lot to say about this but it could take all day.
We’re all coming to yours for dinner tomorrow night, what are you going to prepare for us?
We’re having a pile of roasted fennel and rutabaga with a touch of spice and maple syrup, lemony radicchio salad with toasted pine nuts and fresh parm and homemade roti smothered in ghee and salt. We’ll be drinking a bottle of Controvento, 2018, which will certainly lighten the mood.
Once in lockdown, you questioned how we truly relate to these spaces that we inhabit, habitually, unconsciously; that hold us in our most fragile moments and challenge us in their monotony? What were your findings? Can you share any of them with me?
I discovered that they are really, really haunted—full of voices, images, spirits, and memories that are always lurking just beneath the surface. Sometimes these influences are writing the songs, literally. I also learned that homes are in fact magical and beautiful. And they are the portals through which many of our most potent and challenging discoveries are unearthed. My partner and I ended up moving during covid. I had a dream that we would move into a castle with a big rock wall in front. We found a house with a rock wall, and I was like…I think this is the one! It was……and is. Home is a mystery. Moving made me realize all the emotions, all the ghosts that live with you, and when you move they move, too. But like you, they dig the new space and try to work to make it beautiful. A very spiritual process.
You cite many acts and artists as influences, these include Mount Eerie, Mega Bog, Little Wings, Jonathan Richman, Velvet Underground, Ruth Garbus, Six Organs of Admittance, Yves Jarvis, Brigitte Fontaine, John Frusciante, Robbie Basho & Marisa Anderson. What is it about this very mixed bag that turns you on?
Joy, honesty, otherworldliness, experimentalism, commitment to craft, earthiness, artiness, poeticism, and the willingness to risk it all to make music that is a direct transmission from the deepest parts of self.
I see that John Frusciante is back with the Chili Peppers after a long time away, do you think that this is a good move for him? Will you be catching them on their 2022 world tour?
To be perfectly honest with you, I have never heard a Chili Peppers album…ever. Haha! But I love Frusciante’s solo work a lot. Good for him!
Is there such a thing as the ‘perfect’ record? If so, what is it and who put it out? (many people have said Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys but I just can’t get along with a lot of it….)
There is no perfection in the world. But…I think Jessica Pratt’s On Your Own Love Again is definitely as close to perfect as you can get. I’ve listened to that record an incredible amount of times. Mega Bog’s new album Life, and Another is probably perfect, too. I mean I could list a lot I think are perfect. What else? Brigitte Fontaine’s Comme A La Radio and Sonny Sharrock’s Black Woman are also perfect. Diane Cluck’s Oh Vanille is completely ravishing. Velvet Underground’s Self Titled record is flawless. Big Science by Laurie Anderson. Every John Fahey record. Grass Widow’s Past Time. I could go on and on!
How will you be celebrating on release day for ‘At Home With My Candles’? Will things get messy?
I will be at home eating oranges and drinking tea most likely. So, yes, messy, lots of orange peels.
Do you have a favourite track from the new record? If so, which one is it and why?
I don’t! But I’m fond of a lot of parts: when Yaara and I sing the chorus together at the end of “Song for the Garden” I feel like I’m going to cry.
Once the new record lands, I guess you’ll be wanting to get out on the road and promote it as much as possible, any live shows planned for the near future? Festivals booked for 2022?
I don’t have any shows planned at the moment. My partner and I just had a baby and touring feels daunting. But I am trying to conjure a tour for later this year.
You used a selection of musicians to record the album, how will you go about recreating the tracks in a live environment? (will the other musicians be there? Will you be using backing tapes?)
I played one show earlier this year with backing tracks and it was really fun to go diva-karaoke style. I hope to have a band together to play these songs soon!
Which of the new tracks are you most excited about performing live?
I love singing the anthem of “Moonless (Unmoored)” over and over again, it feels so good.
Aside from the musicians that contributed to the new record, tell me the names of some other artists and bands in your local area that deserve a mention….
World Record Winner, Mope Grooves, Canary Room, Ever Ending Kicks, Saloli, Cave Cricket and Phull Collums are all projects I think are just genius and beautiful.
What are the best social channels to keep up to date with your musical happenings?
Instagram is where I share the most information: @half___shadow. But I’m on Facebook and Twitter, too. My tweets are very funny, I promise.
Lastly, would you rather have the ability to speak to animals or speak 10 foreign languages fluently?
This is a difficult question! I mean, I love it. Hmm. If I’m being deep I’d say animals. If I’m being wordly—I am a Sagittarius, after all—I’d say human languages. Today I’m feeling worldly so I’ll take the ten foreign languages. I know how to speak with animals already, anyway.
We’d like to thank Jesse for sparing the time to chat to us and we wish him every success for the new album and for his future musical endeavours. If you’re from Portland, keep an eye on the local live music listings as I’m sure he will be out playing songs from the new record as soon as he’s able to.
In the meantime, take some time to check out his social media, all links are below.
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