Review: Learning About Your Scale
Half-Handed Cloud
reviews December 14th. 2006, 5:15pm
Since becoming a Christian my music listening habits have changed dramatically. I spend very little time time listening to secular music. No, I’m not saying that secular music is all bad and I’m not saying that Christians should only listen to Christian music. It’s just an observation of the way my habits have changed over the years. I long to hear Biblical truths spoken, sung, written and shared and music is one source of that. I recently stumbled across a band by the name of “Half-Handed cloud”, which I first heard on Pandora. I was immediately struck by the overtly Christian lyrics balanced with a distinctly ”Indie” flavor.
Learning About Your Scale, Released by Asthmatickitty Records (the same label as Sufjan Stevens) is the first CD produced by John Ringhofer, the man behind Half-Handed Cloud. With the longest song being just a hair over two minutes the album is a mosaic of incredible Biblical imagery, Christian theology and inventive instruments (birds chirping, brushing teeth, mouthwash, etc.) With songs like “I cant even breath on my own”, “Make Us Clean”, “Put a new Life In Me”, Ringhofer drives home our brokenness before God and need for forgiveness with unique music and lyrics echoing of a Christian version of “They Might Be Giants”.
Ringhofer’s music is delightfully packed with theology and illusions to not only the Bible but there is even a nod to C.S. Lewis in the song “We must be ploughed-up”.
We must be ploughed up and resown, our mowing never went deep enough my Lord…
Half-Handed Cloud, We must be ploughed up
If I am a field that contains nothing but grass-seed, I cannot produce wheat. Cutting the grass may keep it short: but I shall still produce grass and no wheat. If I want to produce wheat, the change must go deeper than the surface. I must be ploughed up and resown.
- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
In short the music of Half-Handed Cloud is amazingly refreshing, enlightening and to top it off it serves as a reminder that we are not our own.
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