Dave Cloud & The Gospel of Power
Athens, Georgia, United States | INDIE
Music
Discography
Dave Cloud's Discography
Main Albums
Practice in the Milky Way (2011)
Pleasure Before Business (2008)
Napoleon of Temperance (2006)
All My Best (2004)
Songs I Will Always Sing (1999)
Singles and EPs
"Fever" EP (2009)
"Puff Rider" (Various Production remix) (2008)
"You Don't Need Sex" (2007)
Other Recordings
"Take You Slow" on This is Ming Beat: A Tribute to Sexton Ming (2009)
The Fire Starter — An Introduction To Fire Records (2009)
"Lovely Rita" on Sgt. Pepper with a Little Help from His Friends (2007)
Children are Fascinated by Fire v1.2 (2007)
Children are Fascinated by Fire v1.0 (2006)
"All the Same" on Keep Mother, Vol. 2: C & D (2006)
"Carol of the Bells" on A Working Stiff Christmas: 15 Years at Springwater (2000)
Visit Fire Records for the latest information on Dave Cloud albums, singles, downloads and more!
Purchase Music
CDs are available from Fire Records and most major music retailers in Europe, North America, and Japan, including:
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Goner Records (USA)
Wuxtry Records (USA)
Low Yo Yo (USA)
JR.com (USA)
Levykauppa Äx (Finland)
Norman Records (UK)
Tower Records (USA)
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PRACTICE IN THE MILKY WAY
Carnal desire in its many forms suffuses Dave Cloud's fifth album, an expansive set of revved-up alt-blues, garage rock and neo-psychedelia. The Gospel of Power (led by guitar wizard Matt Bach) provides expert backing for Cloud's witty, raunchy and often hilarious lyrics—from the satirical cosmopolitanism of "The Nudist Camp" to a humbling encounter with a dominatrix in "Mrs. Crumb."
Tracks:
Siberian Hypnotist (Cloud)
On The Rebound (Bach/Cloud/Swanson)
Practice In The Milky Way (Bach/Cloud/Swanson)
Flowers (Sexton Ming)
Guy De Maupassant (Bach/Cloud/Swanson)
Spotty Bird (Bach/Cloud/Hatcher)
Mrs. Crumb (Bach/Cloud/Crow/Swanson)
The Nudist Camp (Bach/Cloud)
Boogaloo (Bach/Cloud/Swanson)
Only Girl I Know (Bach/Cloud)
Before I Give You Up (Childs/Cloud)
Razmatazz (Cloud)
Surfer Joe (Bach/Cloud)
School Of Hard Knoxville (Bach/Cloud/Swanson)
Sky High On My New Bimbo (Bach/Cloud/Swanson)
Bring On The Nubiles (Cornwell/Stranglers)
Death In The Wishing Well (Bach/Cloud)
Eat Me Raw (Bach/Booker/Cloud)
Spanky Spank (Cloud)
Party Party Party (Cloud)
The musicians:
Dave Cloud (guitars, vocals, words)
with The Gospel of Power. . .
Matt Bach (guitars, drums, bass, words)
Ben Martin (drums)
Matt Swanson (bass, loops)
Paul Booker (guitars)
featuring: Tony Crow, Brian Boling, Tom George, Charles Hatcher, Cole Street and Dr. Ilse Lazaroms as "Mrs. Crumb"
Produced by Matt Bach and Matt Swanson. Front cover photograph by Jeanne Madic. Sleeve design by John Foster at badpeoplegoodthings.com
“[Cloud is] a true American maverick.”
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— The Skinny
“Beyond irreverent to the point of being genuinely radical. Something you rarely hear in popular music.”
— Impose Magazine
“Beefheartian lyricism bawled with sinister charm over grinding riffs.”
— The Independent
“Excellent”
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— Stool Pigeon
“A mostly rockin', ever weird, sometimes wonderful and often terrifying chimerical sojourn. . .”
— Nashville Scene
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"Take You Slow" on This is Ming Beat: A Tribute to Sexton Ming
Various Artists
CD, RIM Records, 2009
Dave Cloud & The Gospel of Power contribute their cover of Sexton Ming's "Take You Slow" on this tribute to the UK poet and performance artist.
» Available from RIM Records
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"Fever" EP
Dave Cloud & The Gospel of Power
CD and digital download, Fire Records, 2009
Six-track EP includes four original Cloud tunes plus covers of two classics—"Just a Little" and the Rolling Stones' "Citadel." The title track was recorded at Fire Records' Stoke Newington studio in London.
Tracks (written by Cloud except as indicated):
Fever
Just a Little (Durand/Elliot)
Surfer Joe
The Citadel (Jagger/Richards)
No Matter Where You Been
In the Distance
Cover photo by Don Perry.
“Strange and swampy.”
— The Guardian (UK)
“[A] micro-mas
Photos
Bio
Historian of religions Mircea Eliade described shamans as specialists in ecstasy, able to "penetrate the underworld and rise to the sky" in a transcendent state.1
Not surprisingly, fans and critics alike have used the word "shamanistic" to describe Nashville's Dave Cloud. By day a volunteer book reader for the blind, Cloud undergoes a transformation at night, and for over three decades has entertained patrons of local dive bar Springwater, often with his band The Gospel of Power. Cloud's unpredictable performances can be uproarious, jaw-droppingly bizarre events, delighting some while frightening others. His music—an amalgam of experimental garage rock and lounge crooning—defies easy categorization, but his delivery makes the experience hard to forget. As The Sunday Times observed, "Cloud's bellowed vocals, Beefheart-style beat poetry, hefty riffs and freestyle wig-outs achieve a transcendental psychedelic primitivism."2
It was 20 years after his first show at Springwater that Cloud finally decided to record an album. Bassist Matt Swanson produced Songs I Will Always Sing (1999) and All My Best (2004), and released both CDs on his own Thee Swan Recording Company label. Listeners from Paris to Auckland embraced Cloud, the lo-fi tantric yogi whose songs provide a sort of musical psychiatry through their darkly humorous exploration of carnal hedonism.
UK label Fire Records took notice and in 2006 re-released Cloud's entire catalog as the double-CD Napoleon of Temperance. European critics greeted the album enthusiastically; one even suggested that Cloud might be "the last genuine lost genius."2 To support the new album Cloud and his band performed a dozen shows in London and at Bergenfest, where Cloud enjoyed a four-day residency. Producer Swanson colorfully described Cloud's appeal: "he holds a dusty mirror to pop music's tawdry conventions, deftly dismembering the Frankenstein's monster of modern musical excess."
Dave Cloud & The Gospel of Power have released three more recordings on the Fire label: Pleasure Before Business (which the band supported with another tour of Norway and UK); "Fever;" and Practice in the Milky Way.
Cloud has appeared in several films, videos, and television programs, including Harmony Korine's films Gummo and Trash Humpers, an episode of the TV comedy show Travel Sick, and the music video for Bobby Bare's "Are You Sincere." In spring 2008 Cloud was featured in a TV ad campaign for Budweiser beer in the UK.
Dave Cloud & The Gospel of Power continue to record and perform in Nashville.
1Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, trans. Willard R. Trask (New York: Pantheon, 1951), 182.
2 Stewart Lee, "Dave Cloud & The Gospel of Power: Napoleon of Temperance," in The Sunday Times, 25 June 2006.
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