Half-Handed Cloud
Halos and Lassos
Athsmatic Kitty


Would it be enough for me to just say "I like this?" I'm trying to write a very sophisticated treatise about what's so attractive about Half-handed Cloud, and I came up with some good catchphrases like "ADHD symphonies to God" and "worship music on speed" and even "miniature magnum opus," but I'll have to admit that I cannot do what John Ringhofer, who is Half-Handed Cloud, does so well: come up with masterful, disparate, and short snippets of a particular medium (him: the head-bobbingly catchy pop song, me: the witty and revelatory 500-word album review) and somehow string them together into a cohesive work of art. Ringhofer has been doing this since 2001's Learning About Your Scale. It's as if a musically precocious Cub Scout—Ringhofer sometimes sounds like he's about twelve— were locked in a room with a panoply of real and toy instruments, to emerge weeks later with a fractured pop masterpiece. "Halos and Lassos" treads ground so musically and ideologically similar to HHC's past work that it's difficult to describe anything new or different, though there are a few exceptions. The presence of the Omnichord, a kind of electronic autoharp that plays chords with the touch of a button, is not subtle on Halos, it's the backbone of nearly every song. Ringhofer's other usual suspects - melodica, trombone, mallet keyboards, that percussion thing that you turn a crank on - are in full effect, as are his fey "doo-doo-doot-doos". Drums are a little more prominent on this record – see "You've Been Faithful to Us Clouds" for a nearly hip-hop style breakdown courtesy of producer Brandon Buckner.

HHC records are always unabashedly about God. From the first track to the last, Ringhofer is usually singing directly to the Big Guy. Halos and Lassos differs slightly from its immediate predecessor, Thy is a Word and Feet Need Lamps, in the way it's about God: Thy was almost exclusively focused on the more lurid Old Testament stories; Ringhofer cheerily bounced his way through rape, dismemberment, cannibalism, and food roasted over "human poo." This time around he's not wading through the muck to get to the glory, and the resultant lyrics, like "No one can compare with you, our Lord/every lost dream you restore, "almost sound like Evangelical praise-and-worship songs – which a real sense they are, of course, but they're not that nebulous genre of praise-and-worship, the one that sounds a little like early 90's U2 (without the sex, but with the righteousness and leather pants).

It's sad and stupid that we live in a religious/political/economic climate that has a need to create a type of rock and roll called "Christian music," but it's almost worse that the gatekeepers of that "genre" don't recognize the bizarre and reverent mini-masterpieces of Half-Handed Cloud, regardless of what magazines his record label advertises in, as such. Thankfully, it seems Ringhofer couldn't care less: he's got God and an Omnichord, his little pop songs and his unique vision. That other garbage is for whiny music critics to worry about.