5 out of 5

Label: Asthmatic Kitty

Produced by: John Ringhofer and Daniel Smith

Perhaps it was because it was my first Half-handed Cloud album, or perhaps it’s also just John Ringhofer’s best work under the moniker… but We Haven’t Just Been Told, We Have Been Loved is the HHC disc I return to the most; the one that I can listen to on repeat. It’s the one that reminds me that this was a project I really adored, and not just an endless stream of twee ditties. (With as much output as Ringhofer has managed, I can sometimes forget.)

The m.o. has never really changed for Half-Handed Cloud: short, falsetto sung religious parables set to a brass-band and a half of instrumentation, but filtered through a one-man band setup: a few notes here; a few noises there; a kazoo and a glockenspiel and a harp and a kitchen sink, all appearing as needed but no longer than that. There’s Beatles / Beach Boys melodies at the core of everything, but HHC is never exactly pop, being much too weird for that. At the same time, while any given disc cycles over 20+ songs, John ends up making them distinct – completely, on this album – without their quirk feeling especially forced. So it’s this nice blend of hummable familiarity that constantly twists and turns with new wrinkles in the rhythm, or suddenly segueing into something more rocky or noisy to break up the sing-song vibe.

The key to We Haven’t Just Been Told is its balance: the credit list is a bit shorter than debut album Learning About Your Scales, and Ringhofer brings on Danielson Famile person Daniel Smith as a co-producer, both of these changes giving the sound some focus and sharpness. Smith helps to bring out more of a punch to the guitars and drums, and though there are a lot of instruments still played, the focus is kept on the songwriting and the sequencing, so that each tune has a hook and we bounce from style to style at a good clip; other HHC albums can sometimes dip into too much indulgence or soundalike tracks, and that’s very successfully avoided on this album.

The best Half-Handed Cloud songs sound both very intimate, and kind of epic – capable of being played in your living room, or blasted at full volume for a crowd. We Haven’t Just Been Told is essentially a whole album of this, providing a good-for-all-moods album of Ringhofer’s best weird, catchy pop.