"A-House Crack The TV Trick"	The Irish Independent
George Byrne	04 July 1994

You can tell a lot about a band's attitude by the way they handle themselves on television. Dealing as you are with the best form of access to more people than any other medium, it's usually best to pitch your pitch on a programme-to-programme basis, provided of course, you have the wit to carry it off. A House are very good at this. A few weeks agosinger Dave Couse displayed a masterful grasp of TV interview technique on No Disco (currently being repeated at 1pm on Sundays, in case you missed it first time round), achieving the desired effect of encouraging you to listen to the band's records again, or checking them out if you hadn't already got them. And then there was last Tuesday. In general, bands need their heads examined if they refuse television appeances, but 10 minutes into into the artless atrocity which was the opening episode of Gortnaclune '94, the look on Dave Couse's face as he realised what A House were part of seemed to indicate that a nice lie-down on a comfy couch in the company of a shrink was on the cards (God only knows what the Manic Street Preachers are going to make of it in a few weeks time....set your videos for that one!) But such are the perils of promoting a fine new album...sneer and bear it. Coming in the middle of a remarkably prosperous period for Irish albums - The Pale, Something Happens, Sack and Blink all have long playing product available for consumption this month - Wide Eyed And Ignorant (setanta/Parlophone) more than consolidates the glories of I Am The Greatest and shows that, even though with 10 years on the clock and the fact that they can reasonably be described as old hands at this stage, A House can still come up with a new trick or two. Three years ago it was the listomania of 'Endless Art' which set you back on your heels, and this time round it's the turn of 'Here Come The Good Times' to shatter whatever preconceptions you may have had of this band. Wistfully and wittily nostalgic lyrically, producer Phil Thornalley has contrived a musical setting which sounds like every Top 10 hit from 1974 condensed into a three-minute burst. A House sound like a cross between Wizzard, Slade and the Glitter Band...consider my gob well and truly smacked. Oh yeah, and there are 11 more songs here, too. 'She Keeps Me Humble' and the remarkably open 'I Want To Be Allowed To Love You' ("I don't believe that only women bleed/I have blood too and I am drained/With every drop from my heart I'm finding it hard to live with the shame") are typical of the non-mawkish, bruised but not beaten ballads at which A House excel, while 'Deadhead', 'Everything I Am' and 'Why Me?' (not the 1992 Eurovision Winner) up the ante and the pace to balanceout the band's most consistently enjoyable album to date.