Dave Cloud & the Gospel of Power - Pleasure Before Business (Fire)
3/5
By: Andrew Misuraca
I first listened to this record through a bedroom wall whilst in the shower and I thought it sounded like a tortured Edwyn Collins. When it came time to sit down and do a write up I approached my keyboard with a sense of "do I really have to do this...?"
And I'm glad that I did.
25 year veteran of the Nashville scene Dave Cloud with his Gospel of Power backing band (having featured members of Lampchop, The Silver Jews and Clem Snide) roll out a carpet of lo-fi delights and disasters - and some plain weird ramblings too.
Slicker than his previous efforts collected on Napoleon of Temperance, by which I mean it sounds rather more like vinyl than a tape recorder wrapped in a jumper in the corner of a basement club, Pleasure Before Business plays like the Swami Records roster playing drunk fronted by Bukowski on uppers. It's one of those records whose beauty lies in its lo-fi quality, like Guided By Voices' more charming LPs. That warm electric piano; that fuzzy guitar that softens up when it needs to, like a house-trained wolverine; those drums trying to crash out of that boxed-in frequency range. The vocals are obnoxiously loud but on a track like 'Cosmetology' with it's solid groove and opening lines of "I love you girl but there's one thing I must know / why do you dress up like a stripper whenever we go out... / girl could you put just a little more on tonight"... well, I don't see what more there is to say.
'Rock Video' is Dracula after a few too many bloody maries, rolling his Rs like a champ vamp and not making a hell of a lot of sense. Equally nonsensical are his choice of covers as he shouts his way through 'Yummy Yummy Yummy' and the band thrashes its way around the Bee Gees penned 'If I Can't Have You', barely recognisable through the din. But it's his vision that makes Dave Cloud special, the way he perverts songs like 'Airplane Japan', which is essentially a bastardised version of The Beach Boy's "When I Grow Up (To Be A Man)'.
But Pleasure Before Business is resoundingly more hit than miss, and it's good to know that the world is finally sitting up and taking notice of this visionary nutbar.
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