Learning About Your Scale

Learning About Your Scale Artist: Half-Handed Cloud
Label: Asthmatic Kitty
Category: Music


Average customer rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 1


UPC: 656605918327
EAN: 0656605918327
ASIN: B00005Q4BA


Release Date: 2001-10-16

Learning About Your Scale


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Categories | Alternative Rock | Styles | Music
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Chamber Pop Chamber Pop
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Tracks:

  1. Worlds In Speech, Now In Reach!
  2. Those People We Made? We Love 'Em!: Let's Build A Planet
  3. Those People We Made? We Love 'Em!: Look How We Made These People
  4. Those People We Made? We Love 'Em!: Eating Bad-Bad Fruit
  5. Those People We Made? We Love 'Em!: Serpent Head Crushed
  6. Baby Moon
  7. If Before We Were Coughing
  8. Can't Even Breathe On My Own Two Feet
  9. Sooty Insides Need Your Cleanliness: Hope For Clean Theme
  10. Sooty Insides Need Your Cleanliness: Stew Burny-Burn
  11. Sooty Insides Need Your Cleanliness: Don't Want To Be Dirty
  12. Sooty Insides Need Your Cleanliness: Make Us Clean
  13. Sooty Insides Need Your Cleanliness: Put A New Life On Me
  14. Rewire My Desire
  15. We Must Be Ploughed-Up
  16. So Busted Before Your Righteous Throne
  17. Tanning Beds To Shine Your Love
  18. Holy Pouch Shoe Guidance
  19. Make Me All Petered-Out
  20. Three To Guide Us Where We've Never Been
  21. Three To Guide Us Where We've Never Been
  22. Three To Guide Us Where We've Never Been
  23. The Body Blinds Us
  24. Secret Christmas Costume
  25. To Love Like The Father & Son Love Each Other

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  3. Thy Is a Word & Feet Need Lamps
  4. Songs for Christmas
  5. Ships

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars Infectious.......2006-11-30

This was our first Half-handed Cloud CD to purchase, and it has pretty much stayed in the car CD player since it came in.

I can understand how maybe at first some listeners would question what they were listening to (kinda like listening to Danielson Famile for the first time) but I'd definitely suggest giving it a chance. The lyrics are direct and often funny and the overall sound is very catchy.

This is indeed some really nice listening.

4 out of 5 stars Keeping to scale.......2006-07-27

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.

4 out of 5 stars Aren't we bored with depression yet?.......2004-06-06

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.

2 out of 5 stars Don't listen to those critics.......2003-08-23

For some reason or another, everyone and their favorite magazine is raving about Half-Handed Cloud as if he were the Next Big Thing, today's answer to the Beatles and Bob Dylan. For me, this guy does nothing but confuse me a bit.

Believe me, I tried to make myself comfortable with John Ringhofer's little ditties here (with emphasis on "little"; most songs last no longer than one minute). No success was made, however. Ringhofer doesn't give his songs time to resonate with the listener, changing tracks just when a melody is becoming interesting.

Even if we were given songs that actually stayed around for over two minutes, I doubt it would help. Aside from the quirky nature of them, the songs of Half-Handed Cloud lack edge and substance. They tend to sound like something John Lennon might've written when he was two. Ringhofer's vocals, while praised by the likes of Bandoppler Magazine and others, I find annoying; the faded-out sound quality to them may be his style, but it certainly won't help with publicity.

Even lyrically I was disappointed. Ringhofer seems to be living in a happy-Jesus world where no one ever doubts and God is always looking down with love. Major throw up material, if you ask me. Give me Nick Cave any day.

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  2. Klangsystem ~ Marschmellows
  3. Mr. Guitar ~ Link Wray
  4. One ~ Oldominion
  5. Tender Pervert ~ Momus
  6. A Good Tip for a Good Time ~ Cato Salsa Experience
  7. Now You See Me...Now You Don't ~ Cliff Richard
  8. And-Thology
  9. Q People: A Tribute to NRBQ ~ Various Artists
  10. Unkunvenshunal Girl ~ Josie

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My Favorite Songs ~ Philippe Saisse Acoustique Trio

Hank Mobley ~ Hank Mobley

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Carnegie Hall Concert ~ Gerry Mulligan with Chet Baker

White Satin & Black Satin ~ George Shearing

Prelapse ~ Prelapse

Folklore Aus Java ~ Various Artists

Turkmenistan: Songs Of Bakhshi Women ~ Various Artists

Espana Cani ~ Banda Taurina

Musica Viva ~ Paulinho Nogueira & Alemao, Zezo