Dave Cloud & Gospel of Power "Lavender Clothes"

Just when I thought that things like Found Magazine and films like Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus had exposed all the Midwestern cultural secrets we have to hide, I discover Dave Cloud. Dave Cloud is from Nashville, and has accumulated quite the cultish local following over the past 30 or so years, due to a strict live schedule and a transcendent performance style. Listening to Cloud's dark, fitful vocals throughout Napoleon, it's easy to see how he could easily convert unbelievers into willing followers---more often than not, he comes across as an evangelical performing spoken-word poetry, spasmodically truthifying and occasionally lapsing into syllabic reverie. "Lavender Clothes" (mp3) is one of the clear highlights of an absolutely remarkable set of songs. Cloud sounds like the spawn of an unholy alliance between Captain Beefheart and Gary Davis over a crankcase tangle of lo-fi guitars and cymbals channeling the most vital moments of the Stooges ("No Fun," especially) and Guided By Voices. The couplet "I love how you pose in lavender clothes" imagines a pile of faded Polaroid pictures of a shy girl posing in a wood-paneled living room sometime in the mid or late Seventies. The photographs are completely innocent and she's fully clothed, but still appears more than a little uneasy about the whole affair.

Get Napoleon of Temperance from Fire Records here.

ALSO: Songs:Illinois has a rather exclusive and politically timely and pretty catchy song from Peter Case.