I Want Too Much
(Blanco-Y-Negro/LP/CD)
Tim Peacock
Staunch believers in pithy wordplays set to gritty melodies, Dublin's A-House have honed their fiery sound to near Wection for this long-awaited second album.

Both musically and lyrically, 'I Want Too Much' is harder and more sharply focused than the band's '88 debut, 'On Our Big Fat Merry-Go-Round'. As ever, livewire House mainstay Dave Couse's acidic commentary acts as the catalyst, but even when addressing the album's central theme of greed, his observations are well reasoned and shot through with vital snippets of humour.

A case in point is 'I Give You You', where Couse's wry prose is written with bitter hindsight as he laments a one-sided relationship: "I gave fork-out/I gave cough-up/I got cleaned out."

And if things occasionally drift to wordy paranoia, Couse has an instant safety net supplied by the inventive and severely underrated Bunbury/Healy/Wylie riffing team.

And so, given generous rein by Mike Bedge's crisp, unfussy production, A-House have evolved into an infectiously raw pop molotov - ranging from the anti-rape sentiments of the hectoring 'Manstrong', to the Kinks-y self-deprecation in 'Patron Saint Of Mediocrity'.
   
This record continually screams for active participation from both head and feet, but where A-House are concerned, that's far from asking too much.