Armed with the psalms of David, an acoustic guitar, and the electronic Omnichord, Half-handed Cloud assails nineteen new pop songs outside Eden's gates on Halos & Lassos, the latest album on Asthmatic Kitty Records.

With hints of fitness music and video game soundtracks, Halos & Lassos tromps through 19 songs like a mostly-sunny afternoon in Berkeley, California_home of bandleader John Ringhofer.

With the modal purity of Moondog, symphonic elements of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, and the ancient art of punning, the album boasts pop melodies arranged around the ambidextrous Omnichord_a vintage 80's kidney-shaped electronic auto-harp/drum machine/synthesizer.

This odd instrument accounts for much of the unique coloring on the album: accordion-like chords, scrupulous drum beats, pre-set bass-lines, and a rectangular pressure pad strummed for gurgle "effects." Half-handed Cloud is an interesting phenomenon.

John Ringhofer, the man behind the namesake, is as joyful and frugal as his music. An economical thinker, Ringhofer prefers the subway over a taxicab, is a recycler of plastic, a compulsive note-taker, and a habitual optimist.

When not on tour solo or as the trombonist for Sufjan Stevens' Illinoisemakers, he lives rent-free in Berkeley in exchange for his services as a custodian in a church.

His music encapsulates his struggle to make sense of his life and his passions. In Half-handed Cloud this is expressed as an all-consuming search for God.

Like Brother Danielson, Half-handed Cloud is able to ensconce complicated theological concepts into playground song without condescending to his subject or to his listener.