"Lokomotiv Off The Rails"	WOW! Music
n/a	31 March 2001

It's been almost four years to the day since Dave Couse and Fergal Bunbury left the stage for the last time as members of one of the most remarkable bands to emerge from Ireland, A House. After twelve years, five albums and countless live tours, the Walkinstown boys decided to call it a day in style with a sold out show in Dublin's Olympia theatre. Having stirred up a predominantly dormant mid '80's music scene with their first single 'Kick Me Again Jesus', their infectious melodies coupled with Couse's often caustic wit found them mowing through the plains of convention just as the great A&R hunt for the 'next U2' got under way. The addictive, manic pop thrills of 'Call Me Blue', the high speed howling of 'I Want Too Much' and their ambitious single 'Endless Art' (a spoken word list of deceased artists, interspersed with snatches of Mozart) resulted in a large cult following and heaps of critical acclaim from both sides of the Atlantic and Irish sea. As is the case with countless artists, such praise was not always reflected in record sales, but as the then lead guitarist and present core member of their new incarnation Fergal Bunbury explains their decision to shut up shop wasn't a solely commercial one. "We basically thought that we'd taken A House as far as we could go in the format that we had without radically changing things. We wanted to avoid becoming one of those bands that keeps going on and on playing gigs for a bit of cash while becoming less and less in peoples minds or even our own minds. I think people who really liked the band would've preferred that to some kind of slow leakage and fizzling out." "The final push was with 'Wide Eyed And Ignorant'", adds Dave Couse, the affable former A House front man whose quick wit and candid manner strangely earned him a reputation amongst music industry cliques as being a bit of a mouth piece. "That was supposed to be the cross-over album. We'd had quite a bit of success with 'I Am The Greatest' and we'd signed to Parlophone who wanted to take it up a step commercially. But, at the time of making our fifth album 'No More Apologies' we knew it was going to be our last, hence the title." But, as you've probably guessed by now, this was by no means the end of the line for Messrs. Couse & Bunbury. With the release of the single 'Next Time Round' on English independent label Shifty Disco the pair quietly slipped back onto the scene last September under the banner of Locomotiv. Taken from their as yet untitled album this tune signalled a shift from their guitar-based tunes of yore with layers of synthetic sounds and a slow pounding drum machine punctuating its unconventional arrangement of tempo changes. "Because the two of us were such a large part of the sound of A House we deliberately went out of our way to get rid of that old style," says Dave who inadvertently took his first steps last November towards joining the ranks of lone, acoustic based troubadours. As special guest to Cork band, The Frank & Walters (whose 'Grand Parade' album and first single 'Fashion Crisis Hits New York' he produced) Couse played his first gig in four years in 'The Frank's' hometown, accompanied only by his acoustic guitar. "The lads asked me if I was interested in doing a few numbers before they went on. I had no complete solo stuff ready, so I just did a load of old A House songs. It was just me and a guitar doing songs like 'Endless Art', 'Patron Saint of Mediocrity' and 'I Am Afraid'. I couldn't believe it when it came to the stop in that song ('I Am Afraid') and the whole crowd sang it back. I thought 'you can't all know this, can you?' Doing that gig was incredible because I thought that people had forgotten about us four years on and I haven't been out in a while, so it was even funny that people still recognise me," he adds, bemused at the thought of being mobbed by A House fans years after the band had split. "It was very strange. I'd never ever done that before. Even when we did acoustic stuff as A House there'd be four of us on the stage. Hopefully I'll do some solo gigs and do an album as well." (David Couse - the new David Gray? I don't think so, somehow!) On hearing short tunes such as 'Dangerous Rhythm' and 'Plastic Bees' it's clear that this duo and their ever evolving collective of associate musicians have opted for hypnotic, twinkling keyboards, looped beats and samples to replace the snappy guitar sound that was once their trademark. But, if they had already created such good music using guitars (albeit sometimes brilliantly skewed beyond recognition) why change such a winning formula? Fergal takes the point up: "I think the guitar, bass and drums format is a wonderful one to make music with, but if you've been working in that set up for fifteen years you want to do something else and we really didn't want this to sound like A House". As co-producer of an act they refer to as "a collective" he also finds not adhering to the conventional rock band line up opens all sorts of musical possibilities including an opportunity to add his own style of vocals on the scuzzy sounding lament 'Ciaran's Bar'. "The other great difference between Locomotiv and A House is that if Dave doesn't feel like singing a song then we can just get someone else in to do it. If you think a song needs trumpet on it then you go out and find a trumpet player. If you don't think the song needs drums on it then you don't feel the need to record them or get the drummer's input somehow 'cos it's just a machine this time round. We've got artistic freedom because we were doing it ourselves on our own steam which is what we set out to do - to make an album the way we really wanted to." In doing so they recruited musicians they had previously worked with on various projects. Johnny Rowen (whose band Pelvis had been produced by Dave Couse) added his distinctive boyish vocals to two tracks, one being the equally dreamy, but edgy love song 'Story time'. Here keyboard twinkles similar to those of Björk's early solo outings mix with snatches of what Fergal describes as "found sounds - everything from the sound a rusty gate to mad strings" resulting in a less clinical effect. On 'Intercourse with the World' Braeina Corrigan (who worked for over a year on a joint project with Dave following the A House split) takes on lead vocal duties while solo artist Una O' Boyle adds her deft, childlike touch to Couse's distinctive off-kilter vocals on 'Next Time Round'. Not content with operating under a new name and with moving away from the sound of their old band, this duo were hell bent on making sure their music would be heard as that of a new band - so much so that they initially adopted the pseudonyms of Frankie and Tony Fernhill. Fergal (or is it Tony?) explains: "The initial reason for using those names was so that people wouldn't associate this music with A House for either negative or positive reasons. We played with the idea of operating under those names all the time. But, eventually it'd come out as to who was behind the music anyway. C 'mon, you couldn't really lie to peoples faces and say 'no that's not me - I never heard of A House. I dunno what your talking about!' I am Tony Fernhill. Who's this Bunbury character you're on about?' It'd probably be a good angle I suppose! You could have a lot of fun with it, but even on a song like 'Next Time Round' Dave's voice is fairly recognisable." "I know no one would give a shite at the end of the day, but it just made everything a bit interesting for us", adds Dave. "I mean, you can't hide that golden voice, now can you?," he laughs. But, merely being a songwriter for whom the X factor that makes a good song into a great song is "the truth - whatever is in your heart or your head on the day" is not enough for Dave Couse. "I do believe as a musician that it's your duty to try and experiment and come up with something new rather than re-hashing the old. If I was making something like 'I Want Too Much' ten years later I'd be pretty much a sad bastard, wouldn't I? That's what Locomotiv is all about and it's something that nobody's doing. These days, people seem to be in such a hurry that they don't take time to listen to anything apart from the usual fodder on the radio. I think Locomotiv is something that definitely needs time, but when that time is given it's time well spent." Having endured the ups and downs of the roller coaster they call rock'n'roll (where more often than not, the predictable and conservative reap before the innovative) this duo seem quietly confident knowing that some good things are just worth waiting for. "Timing has never been my strong point," stresses Dave. "We've either been ahead of the game or behind it, but we've never been right on the money. To be honest I think we're a little bit ahead with Locomotiv." 'Next Time Round' features on the compilation 'It's a Shifty Disco Thing Vol. 4' out now on the Shifty Disco label. Locomotiv's as yet untitled album will be released "sometime this year" - watch this space.