Dave Cloud Press Archive: 2006–2007

Dave Cloud & The Gospel Of Power: "Lovely Rita" [Top 10 on "Anti-Hit List"]
By J. Sakamoto

Press Archive 2010–2014 2008–2009 2006–2007 1999–2005

“One of a handful of standouts on a song-by-song tribute to The Beatles' soon-to-turn-40 Sgt. Pepper, this sludgy, garage-rock rendition, essayed by Nashville eccentric Cloud, accomplishes the seemingly impossible: it's so disorienting, it makes you feel like you're hearing it for the first time.”
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The Sudden Stop
[Review of the song "Sudden Stop," the closing track on the first disc of the album Napoleon of Temperance]
By Jim Rossignol
“'Sudden Stop' jangles along with jaunty, descending bar-room piano. Upbeat and doomed. [The song's] key lyric is 'it's not the fall / it's the sudden stop,' an observation about the inevitable downward arc of life and love, and where that ends up. It's about the moment when you land. You know about it. Dave knows about it.

Cloud sings it with two vocal tracks, one strong and confident, the other trailing along behind, a less-than-certain iteration left warbling in the over-dub. The microphone distorts as Cloud's stout frame delivers a bellow and holler. The lyrics arrive sometimes with a confidant's precision, and occasionally with the falter of a drunk, where conviction arrives only as the words are uttered. Yes, that is what I mean. And it is what he means.”
» Read the complete review
» Listen to a preview and download "Sudden Stop" at iTunes

Dave Cloud & The Gospel Of Power Napoleon Of Temperence (Fire)
[album review]
By Kieron Gillen
“I occasionally wish for an uncle. He's the guy who'll, after being invited to the wedding of cousin Suzy, crashes the dancefloor and proceeds to sing like Mick Jagger trapped inside a dog until they pull the plug, then continues anyway. Later in the evening, he'll take me to one side and tell me about Russ Meyer films and scuzzy sixties psychedelic garage bands and then ask me if I want to go out back for a drink. If I have some, he downs it and starts hollering like Tom Waits eating out a drainpipe. And if I haven't any, he does exactly the same, but curses me occasionally in a good-natured fashion. I don't have an uncle like that but if I did, I suspect he would be called David Cloud.”

Pop Rocks: Dave Cloud & The Gospel of Power: Napoleon of Temperance
[album review]
By Kevin Hainey
“There's a drunken rawness at play throughout this [CD], as Cloud's rude drawl and microphone battering moan about chasing women, being lazy and generally wasting away. Sometimes Cloud's confrontational vocal anti-approach and purposefully flat delivery gets a bit grating, but then when his band whip out a killer tune, like the garage rock rolling through 'Fantastic Rage,' you realise this is no shtick these boys are playing with but a strange and uniquely deconstructive vision.”
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The Weekly Review
[Includes a review of the Napoleon of Temperance album]
By Ant
“This guy is a bit of a genius if you ask me. He reminds me a lot of Captain Beefheat in places and Wesley Willis in others. There is something really naive about the lyrics. 'Puff Rider' is just amazing, like if you gave a 6 year old a bottle of Bourbon. 'Lavender Clothes' comes across like an even dirtier MC5. Lo-fi blues and off-the-wall music delivered with the kind of conviction that's rare these days. Recommended on the ever cool Fire Records.”
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Pop: New Releases: Dave Cloud & The Gospel of Power: Napoleon of Temperance
[album review]
By Stewart Lee
“Cloud's bellowed vocals, Beefheart-style beat poetry, hefty riffs and freestyle wig-outs achieve a transcendental psychedelic primitivism. He has been a local legend in Nashville for 25 years, but, given that even outsider auteurs such as Jandek and Daniel Johnston have been the subjects of art-house documentaries, how has he remained off our radar? Photographs reveal a bespectacled, burly, middle-aged man with fluffy sideburns. Is Cloud real, or some kind of hoax? The cryptozoologists of rock fandom, who love to believe that the last genuine lost genius is still out there to be found, may take comfort in this selection from Cloud's slim but essential back catalogue. 4 out of 5”
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Dave Cloud & The Gospel of Power—Napoleon of Temperance
[album review]
By Mark Perlaki
“There's no escaping the voice of Dave Cloud—it's one of the most mashed things since Smash, and to give it the full impetus Dave proves himself the king of vocal overdub. . . . 'Motorcycle' could have been lifted straight from Jack Nicholson's movie Head—all underground with psychy wig-out dubbiness. . . . If you want a Frankenstein experiment with artists such as a demented Tom Waits, a wigged out Cat Stevens, and Arthur Brown doing karaoke whilst whacked out of their skulls, Dave Cloud's your man.”
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Dave Cloud & The Gospel of Power—Napoleon of Temperance
[album review]
“[The tracks on the first disc] vary from the sinew-raw and hip-popped real-raw-soul of 'Puff Rider' to the Stones drugged Doors drawl deluge of 'Cool Water.' . . . That the take on the Byrds' "Eight Miles High" is the best version I've ever heard will be of be of no consolation, but as the [other covers] on the second CD mount and over-mount each other, you begin to know that you have a drunk and an expert at the wheel, and if an evening in a downmarket American roadhouse with an upmarket, once-in-a-lifetime combo is what we're after, then we have it here.”

Delia is mesmerised in a slack-jawed kinda way [Delia's Diary]
[Review of concert at Scar Studios, London, 22 April 2006]
By Delia Dansette
“Dave Cloud sings over the top in a kinda. . . loosely timed way. He enunciates clearly and kinda starkly but, at the same time, is as passionate as he can be without having sex with the rest of the band. He kinda looks like a granddaddy Elvis, with big impressive sideburns and square glasses, but his actions are like a Chippendale who's decided to go for pop stardom. It's mesmerising in a slack-jawed what-the-f***ish kinda way.”

Dave Cloud and The Gospel of Power
[Review of concert at The Spitz Festival of Blues, London, 20 April 2006]
By Fancy Smith
“Often coming across on album like a lascivious Mysteron writing pornography for Mills & Boon, live [Dave Cloud] is welded to a set of lean Detroit-style boogie blues ably provided by [The] Gospel of Power, a crack backing band that includes members of Lambchop and Clem Snide. It makes for a great tag team—the boys blam the riffs over and over as Dave chugalugs on about dogfights and, ahem, torture sucking. Not to everyone's tastes I admit, but if you like your mavericks far out (and I mean PHHAARRRR!) you'll love this crazy balloon.”