LET's face it, A House is far more important than U2. At least, when it comes to the question of truthful which band gives us a representation of the story of Irish rock. Look at it this way. Nearly 20 years after the formation of that four piece combo originally called Hype, and the subsequent, seemingly endless hyperbole dished out about Ireland becoming a centre for the rock industry, only The Cranberries have followed U2 on to the world stage. To claim otherwise is a bloody lie - or at least a myth cruelly perpetuated by a few stupid commentators, who seem blind to the fact that such rubbish has led to at least half a hundred bands touted as the next you know who finally collapsing into silence.
This may soon be the fate of A House, who formed in the mid 1980s but, unlike many of their peers, have since produced a series of consistently evolving albums culminating with their latest, No More Apologies, which the French rock magazine Les Rockuptibles has already nominated as "album of the year". And this is not a case of the no matter what happens to Chris de Burgh's popularity over here, at least he'll always be big in Germany rock consolation prize. Similarly laudatory reviews have appeared almost universally, with only Hot Press, at home, damning the album. Nevertheless, despite this avalanche of encouragement and having previously consistently rejected the rumour, Dave Couse now admits that, yes, A House are on the verge of splitting up.
"You don't ever want to say it is the end, but things are shaping up, that way," he concedes. "A House can't support, financially, the six members of the band. When you lose a record deal, as we did nearly two years ago, it's hard to survive. And I have to say that no matter what deal we had, we always were sensible with the money because when we started out we always aimed for longevity, not just to make one or two records. We wanted to be an important band, not just be "rock stars".
"Yet, at the time, we were part of that the next U2 thing. And record companies did get us into that six record deal bind, which works more in their favour than a band's, because they own you for six albums. Bands should go more for a one album, or two album deal, because then, if they are successful, you can get more money for the rest of the albums. Either way, despite all this crap about signing you for six albums, if your, first albums flop you area dropped.
Wise words from a guy who clearly understands the nature of the profit based music industry. Nevertheless, despite the existential nature of the lessons Dave Couse has learned he still exhibits, while speaking of his experiences in the music business, the same kind of humour that hides at the centre of A House songs. And the romanticism.
"But then we always set out to make music, not money, which probably was our downfall and shows you what idiots we were!" he jokes, before admitting that this is precisely the kind of line record company sharks love to hear. "Even so, I still believe that if you are a musician all you should care about is making music and let someone else take care of the financial end of things. Some bands set out just to make money but that, to me, is wrong. And we never helped ourselves, along these lines, we were always stubborn in terms of sales, said no to everything. We were trying to prove a point, I guess.
And what was that point, Dave? "How to be unsuccessful! And it obviously worked, which is quite an achievement, when you think about it! I mean, not many bands get to release five albums and still, remain unsuccessful!"
Excuse me, Mr Couse, but aren't such claims fundamentally, nonsense? Can you really say that A House are "unsuccessful" when they have released five albums which sell to, what, a fan base of roughly 30,000 people? And more than this, when these fans actually love and even live through the music?
"Yes. All that is true, especially in terms of the fans who come up to me and pin me to a wall for an hour asking me what a song really means, or whatever," he says. "But I can't tell you how often - we've sat around and tried to figure out why the band never extended its fan base, why it has remained at that figure of 30 000 throughout our career. Maybe we didn't lick enough arses or insist on going our own way. I really don't know.
"The closest we came to getting a bigger audience was with the last album, Wide Eyed And Ignorant. We spent about £150,000 on that album and the bottom line is that the record company could never get that back on sales of 30,000 copies. That's why we spent only £20,000 on No More Apologies."
Why, in God's name, were A House so reckless as to spend £150,000 on the last album, when their previous three releases had consistently sold no more than 30,000 copies? Is that what he earlier described as being "sensible" with money? "When you're on a major label they just keep throwing money at the problem," he responds.
"They'd say we still don't hear a hit single, let's get another producer and studio time costs £1,000 a day! Though it does help to know there are people who love the music, the only way out of all this really would have been to extend our fan base. Yet that was something we never managed to do.
What, exactly, does Dave Couse believe people will receive if they subscribe to the "Save A House" pension fund through buying the new album? "Our best work to date," he says, emphatically. "And though I am joking about us getting an extra 70,000 fans, I don't mean to downgrade the fans we have. I said earlier that people pin me to a wall to ask me about songs and that is true. And when you know you have created even one song that means this much to people that is one hell of an achievement, right? That's part of why the new album really does come from the heart - is, in ways, more intimate than anything we've ever done before. Especially something like Sisters Song which was as hard to write and record as it still is to sing."
Sisters Song deals with the distance that can develop between a brother and sister as they grow older, an experience which, apparently, is so "common" that many members of A House feel uncomfortable when it comes to performing the song. Nevertheless, it has led to Dave being reunited with the sister who is the subject of the song, even though they had drifted apart before she heard the sense of longing he articulated in its lyrics, and his vocal.
"And if I could do something like that for anyone else listening, to this song, now, or in 10 years, surely that means A House must be doing something right? Even if we never did become the next U2?" he reflects.
"It's the same in relation to a song like Twist And Squeeze which, basically, is about the begrudgery you encounter in this country. Particularly among people in the music business. But now I've come to see, as that song says, that begrudgery is just another name for jealousy, a way people have of trying to brings down someone who travelled 10 places they themselves could never go. They twist the knife in's you because they aren't honest enough to twist it in themselves, in terms of facing their own failures and shortcomings.
"ALL of that shit nearly made me bitter, but I'm over that, which is something I write about in Into The Light, on this album. But so many people do miss the point in relation to this record. They call it `downbeat', but to me that only means it's slow! I see it as totally optimistic, which is a pretty good thing to achieve with the band being as near the edge as we are!"
And if the lights are now turned off in A House, how would Dave want rock historians to view the 11 years they gave to Irish music? "As I said, I always wanted us to be seen as an important band and I do believe that in time it will become obvious that we were," he asserts. "I never believed that pop music is something throwaway, which is why I really do believe that in 10, 20 years, people will take out No More Apologies or any of our albums and see that A House really were committed to creating something timeless. Art, I guess. And I make no apologies for using the word `art' in relation to our music! That really is what we aimed to create. And I believe we have."
