A House

A House (The Grand, Clapham, London)

A loud person in the bar after their set proclaims that A House are a ‘new’ band with a singer who has ‘a lot of charisma’ and ‘an interesting voice’. The guitarist is ‘a bit ropey’, apparently, but all in all they’re ‘surprisingly good’.

Dave Couse’s interesting voice has been at this ‘playing live’ business for about a decade now, and it’s because A House have been so surprisingly good so many times that, despite being in the midst of one of the most personally distressing weekends imaginable (and we’re talking some stiff competition here), I’ve made the pilgrimage out to deepest Clapham, braving the wind and the weirdos on the Tube, to see them play a guest slot with the Blue Aeroplanes.

Dave Couse feeds on audience reaction. It doesn’t much matter whether it’s abusive or slavering, provided it’s a reaction, and luckily, there are enough people here tonight specifically to see A House and shouting encouraging remarks to make their fifty minute set a success. It doesn’t rank up there with those explosive McGonagles shows, but it’s, well, smooth, and Dave is consequently in chatty mode, resplendent in a shirt so garish that he asks the soundman to turn it down on the monitor.

Ferg, meanwhile, is wearing one of those stupid hats that looks like a big sock, Martin grins amiably in the manner of great grinning bassists before him, and A House play ‘Violent Love’, ‘Manstrong’, ‘Endless Art’ (amended to ‘Endless Football’ for the occasion, with Graham Taylor added to the list of heroes and villains), ‘I Lied’, ‘Charity’, ‘Take It Easy On Me’ and most of the best bits from the last two albums (sadly, no ‘When I First Saw You’, though. That would really have given the git in the bar something to talk about).

Highlights amongst the new material include the shameless gimmick of a song that begins with all band members clapping furiously, ‘I Will Never Forgive You’, and the brilliant ‘The Comedy Is Over’.

I stay for most of the Blue Aeroplanes. They’re alright. Gerald has employed a dancer to prance around and fall over all the time. Dave’s shirt was much more entertaining.

• Lorraine Freeney