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Thy Is a Word & Feet Need Lamps

Half-Handed Cloud
1 disc

1. You Get a Horse Shoe
2. Mud
3. Out of Crudeness, Healing
4. Let's Go Javelin
5. Performance Bread
6. Famine's Hard, The
7. Flea Market Temple
8. Pup-Tent-Noah
9. Grandfather Foreskin
10. Quail
11. Thumb Toe Collection
12. Animals Are Cut in Two
13. Disaster Will Come Upon You, And You Will Not Know How to Conjure It Away
14. Jael Peg Caper
15. Everyone Did What Was Right in Their Own Eyes
16. Considered It a Loan
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Additional Info

Manufacturer Part Number (MPN): 13
Credits

Producer
Engineer Daniel Smith; John Ringhofer
Half-Handed Cloud: John Ringhofer (vocals); Bert Hissock (cello); John Benson (clarinet, bass guitar).
Additional personnel: Sufjan Stevens (drums).
Experimental/Christian indie rock has far more in common with the British folk movement than it does with traditional American rock & roll. The slightly pagan themes, strange time signatures, communal living structures, and arsenals of found instruments sound awfully progressive, so if the Danielson Famile are Comus, then Half-Handed Cloud are the genre's Incredible String Band. Led by performance artist/multi-instrumentalist John Ringhofer, HHC introduce a melody, destroy it, and then introduce a new one, often in the span of a couple of minutes. Ringhofer's vocal style is very Wayne Coyne (another artist who owes a great deal to the String Band's Robin Williamson), and his trippy ruminations on the band's third release, Thy Is a Word & Feet Need Lamps, fill the 16 tracks with colors both real and imagined. Engineered and mixed by Danielson mastermind Daniel Smith, Half-Handed Cloud's songs are perfect little pop nuggets disguised as atmospheric and horn-drenched mini-symphonies. Like Of Montreal, they're as memorable as you're willing to allow them to be. Opening with the engaging "You Get a Horseshoe" is smart, as it dupes the listener into thinking that the rest of the record is similar -- it is, but far more difficult to ingest. It's like a litmus test meant to weed out the flowers, and by the time listeners reach the Syd Barrett-inspired "Considered It a Loan," they may not realize that the "Madcap Laugh" is on them. ~ James Christopher Monger