Dave Couse (born 1965) is an Irish musician, producer, and radio presenter best known for being the lead singer and main songwriter with the band A House.
As well as enabling A House to continue, this signing led to Couse developing a strong collaborative and personal bond with Edwyn Collins, and to an enduring relationship also with The Frank and Walters, all of whom were with Setanta at that time.
A House never experienced more than sporadic commercial success and eventually decided to call it quits in 1997, bowing out with a farewell concert at the Olympia Theatre, Dublin in February.
[3][non-primary source needed] The production received some criticism, especially for losing Couse's lyrics in its murky sound, but the album's real difficulty lay in its thematic focus on the death of Couse's father,[2] leading to a morose atmosphere that was not always musically successful.
Couse said later that he had not been fully ready to deal with his fresh grief while working on the album,[2] so it is perhaps not surprising that the record's highlight for many is a powerful version of someone else's song about attachment and loss, John Cale's Close Watch.
Despite its problematic nature, there were positive reviews for Genes in Ireland, some even commenting on Couse's continuing ability to write perkily askew, breezy pop songs.
He had thought that as a solo artist he would pick up something of an instant audience from the body of A House fans, but this did not work out because of the apparently fallow period before 2003, although he had received a fillip through the 2002 releases of The Way We Were and Here Come the Good Times.
Then Genes was a record defined by Couse's personal need to deal with depression stemming from career uncertainty and his father's death, as well as more optimistic but overwhelming events, like the birth of his daughter.
[citation needed] In 2007 on the 10th anniversary of the final A House concert, Couse and Fergal Bunbury reunited once more for a well-received gig at Dublin's Sugar Club.
The Irish Times described the album as unlikely to appeal to a younger generation because Couse is a "middle-aged maker of music the polar opposite of what passes for pop these days" but because of the lyrical sophistication and honesty of this singular and brave songwriter the record is "so affecting and so good".