Last month Dave Couse (with his band The Impossible) played his first ever solo headline show in the UK, at London’s prestigious Borderline.
He was understandably nervous about it but he needn’t have worried – the place was stuffed and he received a hero’s welcome. Not since the heady days of A House – the band he fronted from 1988 until their demise almost 10 years ago – has he felt so elated.
“To be honest I was shocked by the reaction,” he says. “It just goes to show you how much power there is in the internet and in mailing lists. We had played over there in May and we got names of people who bothered to sign the mailing list. We contacted them before the Borderline gig, word got around and a lot of them turned up, which is great. It’s the only way someone like me will build an audience.”
The London show coincided with the UK release of Couse’s new album The World Should Know, which was critically lauded on its Irish release in 2005. The omens so far are good and the album has been picking up some serious airplay across the water. “It’s slow but it’s definitely happening,” he says.
“People like Mark Radcliffe, Phil Jupitus and Steve Lamacq have picked up on it and apparently loads of regional stations have been playing it too. Some of it is down to the A House connection, which can be an albatross around your neck when you’re trying to move on from that. But there was and still is, a lot of goodwill towards the band and there’s no sense in denying the past is there? I know when I saw Joe Strummer with the Mescaleros in the Olympia a few years back I was glad to hear him play ‘London Calling’.”
A House are rightly regarded as one of the greatest Irish bands never to have made it into the big league. Initially signed to Warners’ offshoot Blanco Y Negro, they recorded five albums during their decade-long career; their best arguably being the Edywn Collins produced I Am The Greatest, which was released on Setanta in 1991. Success came tantalisingly close with the single ‘Endless Art’ reaching number 46 on the UK charts in June ‘92. (Couse has recently updated the song as ‘Endless Art 06’.)
“It was a whole different world back then,” he recalls of those far-off days. “There were far less bands around for a start. But they were mostly good bands, and they had to be full-time as bands, not making music in the bedroom and going off to the day job. And all the bands were very different, unlike a lot of the current crop of UK bands who all sound the same to me. Whatever you think about us we had our own uniqueness, something that was all to ourselves and which we had ownership of. It was a great time to be an Irish band in London we’d stay in the Columbia Hotel and Aslan would be across the other side of the bar and someone like Cactus World News might be in another corner. We were young and we had so much energy. We were doing what we were supposed to be doing when you’re in a band.”
Sadly, A House ended their days with an emotion-packed night at Dublin’s Olympia in 1997. Since then Couse has struggled to establish a solo career with some modest successes along the way, the highlight being a series of gigs with Edwyn Collins in Dublin’s Village. Never a man shy with words he finds himself increasingly at odds with much of today’s scene.
“The music industry is in such disarray at the moment – it’s all frills and no knickers,” he says. “As a writer and as a musician I’ve always felt it was my job to make it as good as possible. But coolness and attitude seems to be what it’s all about these days – it’s almost music by committee. We believed in melodies and words but the craft of songwriting seems to be irrelevant. I get a bit of that attitude from some young bands who support us – they’re more worried about how they’re perceived and how they’re going to be received rather than concentrating on being good.”
He remains wary of the future and knows only too well that critical acclaim and cult adoration doesn’t put bread on the table.
“Every day I ask myself why I do this,” he laughs. “It’s very difficult to make a living at this game. I don’t know how much longer I’ll keep it going. If your interest wanes by even two or three percent it begins to affect the music. It feels like I’ve been on a hill on the way back up ever since A House folded. I feel I’m not quite there yet and that I have one more great record in me. I have no interest in world domination. I’d just like to be able to tour the UK once in a while, do the odd gig in Europe and maybe the occasional jaunt around in the US.”