Thy Is a Word, and Feet Need Lamps

Half-handed Cloud's third album for Asthmatic Kitty, Thy Is a Word and Feet Need Lamps, delivers an enlightening new collection of signature songs by singer/songwriter/ multi-instrumentalist John Ringhofer. HH'’s first two full-length albums, Learning About Your Scale and We Haven't Just Been Told, We Have Been Loved left critics struggling to draw comparisons with other artists, but Ringhofer acknowledges the influence of Brian Wilson, the Beatles, and some impossibly obscure musicians whose experimental music came of age in the 1960s.

Influences aside, there is really no one quite like HHC. Thy Is a Word... features guitars, cellos, pianos, bassy/breathy church organs, woodwinds, brass, non-instrument sounds, an eight-person choir, and various percussion, recorded almost entirely in the roomy space of a church sanctuary. (A frequent member of Sufjan Steven's touring band, Ringhofer is joined here by Stevens on drums.) The narrative songs of Thy Is a Word... revisit Bible verses and stories -- mostly Old Testament -- that you may not have heard in Sunday school. Ringhofer, never didactic in his work, refrains from drawing conclusions, but subtly and cinematically directs listeners' eyes and ears to the pace between the words, leaving interpretation up to them.