House of the Rising Sons

"Aw, c'mon! You're paying for this y'know!" A House have just unveiled a new song before a packed house on their return to the band's old haunt, "The Underground". The tune has been well – if politely – received but the show of approval is a mite too reserved for frontman Dave Couse's taste.

The ebullient singer and writer of all A House songs is the possessor of a ready wit and matching sharp tongue. There's also an ever-present glint of mischievousness in his eye, as confirmed by guitarist Fergal Bunbury who relates the tale of Dave's encounter with BP Fallon on the set of TV Ga Ga. "BP was following one of The Bogmen all over the place taking photographs of him," Fergal explains, "and a short while later the four of us were sitting in the dressing-room and Beep walks in and says 'Hello Houses. Has anyone seen Tommy Bogman around?' and we said no, and he said 'Well, if you do, will you tell him I was looking for him' and he turned to leave. And Dave called after him 'Eh, who do we say was looking for him?'"

Couse's iconoclasm leads him to take swipes at many figures on the domestic scene, especially those he feels have been unhelpful to young bands, and to A House in particular. Having previously pledged never to darken the stage of the Baggot Inn, for example, The Housemates have since found themselves doing just that. As Dave puts it: "We don't like the place but there's nowhere else to play in Dublin–there's The Underground..."

So what's the difficulty about The Baggot? "Well," Dave expounds,"it costs £300 for PA hire alone and then the owner takes a further 20% of the door so you have to charge £3 in, and no new band can charge £3 because no one would go. It's discriminatory against new bands".

"It's a real steps-on-the-ladder thing," says Fergal. "A band is supposed to progress from The Underground to the Baggot....""But those are the only steps!" Dave interrupts. "We thought we could avoid all that. We thought 'Fuck this, there has to be another way.' But there isn't."

"We asked The Baggot if we could have some arrangement to get people on the dole in cheaper, 'cos a lot of the people who come to see us regularly are on the dole. And £3 is steep. It takes away two pints before you're even in the door with the result that one night out watching us is going to cost some people their week's spending money. Anyway, we were told it would be impossible to operate any reductions in price."" At least", he quips, "we've held off playing the Stadium so far".

As their journey towards becoming Household names has progressed, A House have stumbled regularly over the outstretched legs of various promoters. Like the one who saw the band's posters advertising their Thursday night gig at his venue and remembered he'd forgotten to tell them he'd postponed the show till the following Saturday. The result – £50 worth of worthless posters. "When you're constantly up against this sort of thing it's distressing". remarks Dave.

As the outfit’s stock rises such situations are becoming rarer on this side of the Irish Sea, but as Dave Couse points out: "You may think you’re getting somewhere over here but you go over to London and you’re just a nobody."

"Our last London gig was typical," says Fergal, "We were advertised close to the top of the bill. Then Stump came along and so naturally Stump had to go on after us. Then another band was added called Big Music, who’d just signed a deal so we were knocked further than the bill and basically we went on first after getting a two minute soundcheck. That wasn’t the first time that happened over there. You just get bullied into it and there’s virtually nothing you can do – you can either pull out or play. And we’d travelled all that way to play…"

The foundations of A House were lain during the couple of years Dave, Fergal and drummer Dermot Wiley spent in a reputedly awful band called Last Chance.

"We weren’t very good," admits Dave, "but Last Chance was very important as a building period for us and some of the songs we wrote then were carried on to A House." Eventually though, Last Chance got no more last chances and the trio regrouped as A House, taking on friend and hanger-on Martin Healy as bass player. "He’d never played an instrument before", explains Dave, but we said ‘Come on Martin, play bass’ and miraculously he picked it up."

Having endured the purgatory of Last Chance (two gigs in two years) did the praise lavished on A House from the very beginning come as any surprise? "We were surprised it happened so fast", answers Fergal "Before we’d even played a gig everyone was saying nice things about our first demo, which we couldn’t believe at the time." In the intervening two years A House have been on the receiving end of much favourable press, including uniformly positive reviews in Britain for their debut single "Kick Me Again Jesus". Dave believes the band have taken the exceptional volume of bon mots in their stride "You do become sort of immune to it. You just go on and do what you’re doing. It’s good to have it, yeah, but it’s not enough. It’s okay, but it’s still not what we deserve – or what we feel we deserve."

Up to the recent single release of ‘Kick Me’, the only dissenting voice of note has been that of our own George Byrne whose review of the outfit’s NIHE Fresher’s Ball appearance some months back still arouses a degree of hostility from Couse. He quotes Byrne’s assessment that "The pimply-faced paranoia and acned angst of songs like ‘Head Above Water’, ‘You Are Beautiful’, Pretty Something’ and ‘Hit Me Over The Head With Your Handbag Dear’ can be entertaining on first, second and even fifth hearing but after the best part of a year’s exposure they sound remarkably twee and more than a little contrived."

"The songs are not twee!" Dave insists. "If a song is twee it’s twee from the start. It’s the same song. It doesn’t suddenly become twee after five or six listens. Anyway, even if you get enjoyment out of five listens, a song is good. You might then get tired of it but you get tired of anything. There’s no need to slag us off and I would take that as a slag. And there’s no need to bring into it the fact that I have acne – that was totally uncalled for. And George is no oil painting himself. I was annoyed when I read it. There’s no call for that." The song ‘That’s Not True’ – a piece of invective aimed at members of the journalistic profession and delivered at The Underground replete with Dylanesque snarls – is soon to appear on a British compilation album, the title of which no one from A House can recall at the time of writing.

So, a week after their debut single entered the UK Indie Charts at Number 40 – an unexpected bonus for the band in the light of the small pressing run – does the man behind the Housing scheme of things reckon it’s in that direction their future lies? "Yeah. A big Indie band," Dave replies, " I don’t think we’ll ever be hugely commercially successful in the mainstream sense. I don’t think I’d even like that too much. It’s very hard to get a huge audience to appreciate songs. No, I’d rather be credible." He chokes on a laugh of mock embarrassment. "Ugh, no! That sounds horrible. No, I’d rather play to smaller crowds who are listening and appreciative of the music rather than play to two million, most of whom can’t see you from the back of a big stadium. I’d rather have real fans who’ll go out and buy your next record on trust, without having heard it, rather than have them buy it because we’re this year’s Duran Duran."

While Duran and A-Ha may have little immediate cause to look over their shoulders, it’s true that the Houseparty is only beginning to get into the swing of things. Recent outings to The Baggot and The Underground have revealed the addition of a few more strings to their musical bow in the form of previously unsuspected instrumental subtleties and a lessening of their over-reliance on the Bo Diddley beat. Each show brings forth a couple of new songs, admittedly of varying quality, which add substance to Dave’s claim that "At this stage we’re probably the most prolific band in Ireland because we’ve virtually replenished the entire set we started out with two years ago."

Still, it’s a relative oldie which has been chosen as the forthcoming single on RIP Records. ‘Snowball Down’ is a sub-three minute steam train of a song which careers precariously along, propelled by Fergal’s appropriately grubby driving guitar and conducted around Dave’s distinctive love-‘em or loathe-‘em vocal exertions. I anticipate its commitment to vinyl with eagerness.

Currently throwing their doors open to a wider public, A House could prove your dream home. Be on your garden.