Search - Half-Handed Cloud :: Learning About Your Scale

Aren't we bored with depression yet?

Zachariah M Durr | North Royalton, Ohio United States | 06/06/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This album plays like a Sunday school service on acid. If that sentence appeals to you, you'll like this album. Clever wordplay and experimental instrumentation (he uses hair dryers, kazoos, guitar and a "talking book" on one song) in commercial-length songs about god and Jesus. It's very entertaining, catchy, and funny (not ironically funny, actual funny). Great CD mix fodder, too. Go on, get it."

Keeping to scale

E. A Solinas | MD USA | 07/27/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Christian rock, as a rule, is soppy pop-rock about how much Jesus loves us and how revoltingly happy we'll be if we get to know God. It's not just lyrically simplistic, but musically bland.



So a lot of indie-rock fans will probably hesitate before listening to Half-Handed Cloud's "Learning About Your Scale." They don't need to. Half-Handed Cloud sounds like the wonky, churchgoing little brother of Sufjan Stevens and Shapes And Sizes, making this little album fun from start to finish.



It opens with a spluttery, strange little intro that sounds like a didgeridoo on acid, before launching itself off on some squelching sounds and a keyboard melody. That's just the first thirty-seconds. Then frontman John Ringhofer begins crooning, "The worlds were in his speech/but now they're in reach..." repeatedly, before getting cut off by "here, have a look," birdcalls and clatters.



It's followed by charming little chamberpop songs like "Let's Build a Planet," which suggests to God, "let's build a planet, God/the plans's right here/it shouldn't take too long/we'll build the trees/two days before the oxygen...", and is followed by the upbeat pop song "Look How We Made These People."



But upbeat pop isn't everything. There are twenty-second psychedelic jams, ominous folk melodies, squiggly guitar pop, blippy acoustics, trippy perky pop, and little skits about stew burning. Even the plainest songs like "Tanning Beds To Shine Your Love" are spiced up with Ringhofer's infectious, joyful take on life.



No song on "Learning about Your Scale" is more than two minutes long, and most of these little ditties are under one minute long. That's the main flaw with this album, since it means that none of the cute little songs have time to blossom as fully as they could, if they were just a minute longer.



Ringhofer spices up the basic folk sound with... just about everything else. Waves of distortion, bird chirps, coughing radios, xylophone, repeating samples, fuzz and a squeaky toy that keeps getting squished all make the mix, alongside robust horns and acoustic guitar. It sounds like someone spiked the punch at a folk festival -- and it's fantastic.



With his sweetly ordinary voice, Ringhofer spends most of the album adding his own quirky perspective to what seems like typical Christian beliefs, like the creation of the world. "Eating Bad-Bad Fruit" is an aural version of the whole "Garden of Eden" thing, and despite the oily televangelist sample at the start of "Rewire my Desire," the song is a bittersweet look at human fallibility.



Half-Handed Cloud is not so much Christian music, as it is brilliantly warped indie-rock that happens to have religious lyrics. Charming and endearing."