A House On Our Big Fat Merry-Go-Round

A House On Our Big Fat Merry-Go-Around

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It is a rare and welcome thing to encounter a group from Dublin who have not been artistically paralysed by the long shadows cast by U2. Unlike most of their lrish musical contemporaries, A House seem to have misspent their youth gazing across the lrish Sea towards the Northwest Frontier of Manchester and Liverpool, soaking up the rich vein of heavy, atmospheric pop emanating from such groups as the Echo and The Bunnymen, Teardrop Explodes and New Order. A House have absorbed these influences on this strikingly confident debut LP, and channelled them into a potent and original sound. Aware of the beauty of brevity, these songs crackle with a manic energy and a raw, naked anger. From the scatterbrained folk punk of Violent Love to the sonic blast of Stone The Crows, Fergal Bunbury weaves a tangled web of carousing, rasping and colliding guitars, whilst singer David Couse's voice cruises through the carnage, dripping with the tarnished innocence of the defrocked chorister. The songs suggest that this house is not a happy one-the lyrics are pregnant with menace, grinding axes indiscriminately into the heads of Church, State, politicians and Stock, Aitken and Waterman.