To be frank you wonder what would have become of Dave Cloud if he hadn’t been a musician. New album Practice In The Milky Way is 20 tracks of unhinged musical madness that is perfectly described as gutter-minded blues.

After his 20 year catalogue was rediscovered by Fire Records and reissued in the Napoleon Of Temperance compilation of 2006, Cloud, accompanied by various members of Lambchop and Silver Jews, has increasingly found his true voice as a witty outsider on the fringes of American alt-blues –  a genre that now, arguably, is as far from the margins as its ever been. Which is why on Flowers, Cloud takes it to the edge as he mutters, “let Genesis King Crimson smoke your weed… pretty flowers… why do you hate the hippies so much?”

Throughout Practice In The Milky Way, Cloud seems tugged by intellect and carnal desire – the dislocated Guy De Maupassant is followed by Spotty Girls, in which he is driven insane by the facial complexion of English girls who he threatens to follow home. “Let’s have it off!” Cloud wails along with the guitars. On The Nudist Camp he posits that the place for shedding clothes is “a great place for romance” in a growl over a languid backing, like Tom Waits telling smutty jokes at the end of a British pier.  Cloud veers between deranged barroom blues of Razmattaz to free form rattling about calico, “Me heee co” and “Tex mex” in Surfer Joe. It’s entirely American, yet somehow taking the piss – which perhaps explains Cloud’s success in Scandinavia, the UK, and rest of Europe.

Of course, the purists might be affronted. But for the rest of us, this wry take on the world is, as a female vocal describes Cloud in Mrs Crumb: “raunchy, reckless and reprehensible…  violent and vulgar.”

Amen to that. Out on July 19th.

Download Dave Cloud & The Gospel Of Power – On The Rebound mp3 (from Practice In The Milky Way)