06/30/2022
https://everout.com/portland/events/crowey-half-shadow-and-queen-elixabeth/e121330/
"“A Murder of…” is the second full-length offering from Portland based psych-folk duo Crowey. Originally self-released on Bandcamp on December 4, 2020, it garnered an enthusiastic response from friends and fans and will now be released on vinyl through SDM Records. An exploration of the stresses of modern times through the subconscious lens, the album blends finger-style singer-songwriter folk of the early 1970s with neoclassical and ambient music, taking the listener on a meditative journey through the darkest depths of the heart to find the light within. The album also faces the struggle with one’s own mortality, seeking acceptance and beauty in the cycle of life and death. Densely lush yet delicately intimate, “A Murder of…” is sure to swallow you up in a swirl of darkly gorgeous reverberations.
For the better part of a decade Half Shadow, the midnight-blue songwriting moniker of Portland’s Jesse Carsten, has been unfurling an enigmatic, windswept music: equal parts earthen folk and cosmic rock and roll, with a primal pop experimentalism seeping from the edges. Wedding an expansive, transcendent poetics to a fiercely home-spun aesthetic, Carsten creates joyful, eclectic song-collages that embrace the experimental singer-songwriter tradition of the Pacific Northwest while enfolding an array of canonical art-voicings; songs range from abstract finger-picked poems to heart-tugged acapella treaties and repetitive art-rock incantations. The Portland Mercury has praised Carsten’s shows as “invariably powerful, full of wonder, and unlike anything else.” Half Shadow’s third LP At Home With My Candles was released on April 8th via Bud Tapes and Dove Cove Records. An album of mythopoetic paeans to the domestic uncanny, the record’s songs chart the beauty and strangeness that domestic life can conjure, effectively expanding the project’s intimate poetics without ever losing a sense of tenderness. Intimate folk songs magnify into anthemic chant-alongs, lo-fi dirges, and primal pop experiments. Genres blend with a subtly psychedelic grace, with Carsten’s voice delivering dream-laden poems, always at the center of the sound. Listeners are sung into an interiorized sphere: an otherworldly landscape of tension, languor, and mystery. Featuring contributions from such west-coast luminaries as Zach Burba (Iji, Mega Bog, Dear Nora), Jem Marie (The Ghost Ease), Julian Morris (Layperson, Post Moves), and mastering from Kevin Christopher (Oh Rose, Ancient Pools), the album’s songs emerge in vivid technicolor, engaging listeners in a process of seeing our world, our selves, and in this case the homes we haunt, with new, uncanny vision.
Queen Elixabeth is the resurrected entity of Portland-based singer-songwriter Lizzy Rose. Blending her training in classical voice with electronic/indie-rock undertones, Queen Elixabeth “sings in her hauntingly beautiful falsetto lilt over melancholy piano and guitar soundscapes, creating startlingly tender and gorgeously crafted dreamlike song
“A Murder of…” is the second full-length offering from Portland based psych-folk duo Crowey. Originally self-released on Bandcamp on December 4, 2020, it garnered an enthusiastic response from friends and fans and will now be released on vinyl through SDM Records. An exploration o...
