You are most likely to know Dave Couse as the singer songwriter with Irish Indie legends A House, the band most remembered for the singles Call Me Blue, Endless Art and Here Come The Good Times. They also gave us five albums, which are widely considered to rank among the best Irish albums ever.
In late 2005, the response in his native Ireland to Couse’s second solo album ‘The World Should Know’ enabled him to have a genuine artistic and commercial revival of Lazarus proportions. Backed by his new band The Impossible, Couse returned with a spark and passion unlike he’d known in years. The single Batman & Robin was a true radio hit with heavy national airplay and also featured on the play-list of BBC Radio 2 in the U.K.
A House formed in 1985 and it only took the release of two independent singles to convince the great Geoff Travis, of Rough Trade to sign them to his Blanco y Negro label. In the States they captured the imagination of Seymour Stein, supremo of Sire Records. The debut album, On Our Big Fat Merry Go Round and follow-up I Want Too Much were released through Sire in the U.S. The single Call Me Blue reached no. 3 in the Billboard College Charts in 1989. A House toured the U.S. extensively with The Go-Betweens, at the start of what would be somewhat of a bumpy but glorious 12 year ride for the band.
Later albums I Am The Greatest and Wide Eyed & Ignorant caught the attention of former Ramones and Talking Heads manager Gary Kurfurst who released them on his Radio-Active label. Other notable hits came along in the form of Take It Easy On Me and Strong & The Silent. In 1997 A House made one final musical statement with No More Apologies and band bowed out in style with an emotional and now folkloric farewell show at Dublin’s Olympia Theatre. A retrospective anthology called The Way We Were appeared in 2002, while Here Come The Good Times was adopted as the song for the Republic of Ireland soccer team’s World Cup campaign in Japan that summer.
In 2003 Couse released his debut solo album, ‘Genes’, collaborating once more with his long-term friend, Orange Juice / A Girl Like You maestro Edwyn Collins. A somewhat introspective affair, ‘Genes’ yielded new live favourites in the form of Familiar Feeling and Will It Ever Stop Raining?
More recently Dave has gone back to production when he took the controls on the Frank & Walters’ most recent album ‘A Renewed Interest In Happiness’. In the last couple of years Couse’s talents have reached the world of radio. After several successful stints standing in for Tom Dunne on Today FM’s Irish Alternative show ‘Pet Sounds’ , Dave has become Tom’s regular stand-in , developing his own show ‘Dangerous Rhythmâ€.
Dave is currently industriously engaged in creativity at his Dublin bunker with A House guitar maestro Ferg Bunbury and cellist Rike Soeller, planning his next artistic assault on the world for early 2009. Expect lots of activity on a Trans-Atlantic scale.
Worldwide Management :
Frank Donnelly - [email protected]
Batman & Robin - (RTE 2006)Will It Ever Stop Raining - (RTE 2006)
