Inspiral Carpets - Madchester, Farfisa and poetry

One of the essential bands of the Madchester era, alongside Charlatans, Happy Mondays and Stone Roses. Inspiral Carpets' four classic albums left their mark on British pop-rock with electric organ riffs, irresistible grooves and dynamic vocal interplay

by Federico Romagnoli

When it comes to Madchester, the notorious scene halfway between dance and psychedelic rock that gripped England around the turn of the Nineties, the first bands to get mentioned are Stone Roses and Happy Mondays, closely followed by the Charlatans. The Inspiral Carpets, while undoubtedly the most celebrated act after the three mentioned above, already fall into a lower tier when it comes to critical esteem and recognition among today's alternative-music fans.

A small historical distortion, given that none of the bands mentioned above released four albums in a row capable of leaving their mark on that scene. The Stone Roses burned out shortly after their debut album, Happy Mondays proved utterly incapable of handling the success of "Pills 'n' Thrills And Bellyaches", while the Charlatans stuck with that sound for only a couple of albums, however era-defining they were.

Even though rock historiography today does everything it can to ignore them, the time has surely come to give the Inspiral Carpets their rightful place among the greats. Their career began in Oldham in the mid-Eighties and carried on for around five years in a rather troubled fashion, with a long string of minor releases, some for independent labels, some self-distributed. The original line-up featured Stephen Holt (vocals), Craig Gill (drums), Graham Lambert (guitars) and Clint Boon (keyboards). The latter would become the true architect of their sound, an alchemist equally adept at juggling the sci-fi tones of electronic keyboards and the flashback nostalgic for the Farfisa organ, one of the most typical instruments of psychedelic Sixties pop.

In December 1987 the band, bolstered by bassist David Swift, recorded eleven songs. It was a dry run, which would only be released a year and a half later under the title Dung 4, exclusively on cassette, to capitalize on their growing popularity despite not yet having a proper album out. The sound sits somewhere between the psychedelic pop of the early Echo and the Bunnymen, albeit with the electric organ front and centre, and the indie pop of the famous C86 compilation, filtered through Sixties folk-rock guitars. The audio quality also sticks to the fairly low C86 standard, since much of the material was recorded live in one take. Almost all the tracks would later be re-recorded, with a considerably bigger budget, for inclusion on the band's first official releases, but their potential is already fully evident, and the melodies are irresistible.

In July 1988 the first EP came out, Plane Crash, featuring five tracks. The formula takes off, with titles like "Keep The Circle Around" and "Garage Full Of Flowers" showcasing a kind of garage rock never heard before. It's powerful and tight, yet it conveys neither the fury nor the taste for chaos typical of the era's revivalist bands. Thanks to airy vocal harmonies and echo, it instead takes on a dreamy, almost epic tone, broken only by the fun cover of "96 Tears", the proto-punk classic released over twenty years earlier by Question Mark and the Mysterians.

The second EP, Trainsurfing, came out in March 1989. The lineup is overhauled: Holt and Swift have left to form Rainkings. In their place come Tom Hingley, whose vocal tone bears a surprising resemblance to that of Julian Cope, and Martyn Walsh, whose massive bass lines would become one of the quintet's trademarks. Meanwhile Boon has taken on an ever greater role as second voice: the songs are all strongly marked by his lovely nasal backing vocals. While "Butterfly" and "Causeaway" carry on the formula of full-throttle garage pop, "You Can't Take The Truth" reveals the Inspirals' more introverted side, without giving up the frantic drum syncopation and whirling guitar lines. The lyrics paint a sad little picture in which the protagonist proves unable to accept the end of a relationship: "Those words you wrote to me, they didn't mean a thing/ They were just stupid jokes, I think you're one of them".

Between May and August of the same year, two singles were released, "Joe" and "Find Out Why", pivotal songs that close the circle: it's here that Boon's keyboards, organ first and foremost, finally take over for good, amid riffs obsessively repeated hooks and memorable melodic phrases. Lambert's guitar shifts into the background, tracing and filling out the textures of the arrangement, carving out a role that's certainly fundamental, but decidedly less flashy than that of your typical rock guitarist. Neither track contains sounds that could be linked to the dance world, yet both are brazenly danceable: house music hadn't yet brushed up against them, but their mindset already seemed to embrace its creed. They would later be collected on the EP Cool As Fuck.

In October 1989 it's the turn of another single, "Move", which brushes the British top 40 and convinces Mute to sign them. With a label powerful enough to carry them, their visibility skyrockets. The following March comes "This Is How It Feels", which immediately hooks the top 20, helped in no small part by the evocative video, set on a bare, windswept hill somewhere lost in the English countryside.

A track of unrepeatable delicacy, it remains to this day the Inspirals' anthem and one of the reasons anyone identifies the Madchester era. The pastoral-toned keyboards and the circular drumbeat support Hingley, who sings lines loaded with emotion, though open to multiple interpretations: ⟦Q1⟧. It could be about a depressed woman whose unease goes unnoticed by her own family, just as it could be about a husband who mistreats his wife.

The band's steep rise in popularity is confirmed by the memorable cover Melody Maker devotes to them on 14 April '90: baggy, colourful sweaters, British-invasion haircuts, light blasted straight into their faces. The following week sees the release of the long-awaited debut album, Life, which shoots straight to number 2 on the charts.

Besides the two singles that preceded it, it contains a handful of tracks destined to become true cult favourites among fans: "Directing Traffik" (with its tongue-twisting verse, the powerful riffs bass line and Lambert's refined arpeggios, buried in the mix yet still managing to steal the spotlight), "Song For A Family" (strong piano presence, drums at full volume and melodic ups and downs worthy of the Teardrop Explodes), "Monkey On My Back" (a breakneck sketch of barely two minutes), "Sackville" (a steamroller march with the bass line jolted by sudden electronic injections).

It's above all, though, the album's acrobatic centrepiece that goes by the name of "She Comes In The Fall". It shifts pace as if it were prog, yet its sound is rooted in garage rock; it's danceable in true Madchester tradition, yet it's occupied in several stretches by martial, solemn drumming; it's fresh and perfectly of its time, yet it carries an ancient flavour thanks to certain harmonies, both vocal and instrumental, that recall Celtic music. In under five minutes it manages to marry what seem like irreconcilable contradictions and turn them into one of the most emblematic melodies of the era.

On 25 August the band reaches its peak, when they play as headliners at the Reading Festival in front of an enormous crowd. Meanwhile, a new single, "Commercial Rain", is released on the American market, a freshly recorded version of the track that originally appeared on the B-side of "Joe". It doesn't prove a particularly happy choice, considering the long dissonant intro would have killed the commercial potential of any song, yet the density of the sounds makes it one of the band's most creative moments. As well as their first open flirtation with dance music.

November brings the release of the EP Island Head, containing four new tracks. Standouts include "Biggest Mountain", where their Celtic streak comes roaring to the fore, and "Weakness", a new gem of psychedelic pop with keyboards and vocal harmonies layered to an almost obsessive degree, a small taste of what was to come shortly after.

It's April 1991 when their second album, The Beast Inside, hits the shops. On the whole it's a much less accessible record than the first, blessed with a great deal of sonic experimentation and several tracks of a decidedly experimental bent. Even so, its somewhat anaemic commercial performance is hard to explain, given that at least the lead single, "Caravan", complete with house piano, is utterly catchy. Entering the charts at number 5 would even be commendable, were it not for the fact that three weeks later the record has already vanished from the listings.

The sudden drop in popularity, coming less than a year on, was never fully digested by the band, and even today the feeling is that Boon and co. regard it as the album with which they shot themselves in the foot. You could call it a kind of "Dog Man Star" (Suede) that has yet to be reappraised. Because, whatever the band themselves might think, it's their richest record in terms of both ideas and sounds, and essentially one of the forgotten masterpieces of British music.

After the aforementioned single and the pleasant "Please Be Cruel", cut from the same cloth as the previous album, comes the first real shock. Introduced by spectral keyboard sounds, "Born Yesterday" drops the Inspirals into gothic-rock territory. The equally rarefied lyrics mix fragments and snapshots hinting at the misunderstandings of a troubled relationship.

The title track is their undisputed peak on the Celtic front: a mighty march unfolding amid bell sounds, organ solos, folk arpeggios, bass lines with a progressive flavour, vocal harmonies as old as the dolmens, and a pervasive pagan-ritual atmosphere.

The pop/ambient blend of "Niagara" tears down the barriers, doing away with drums and stretching out angelic keyboards for seven minutes. The vocal gets lost in a sea of echo as it tackles a far-from-uplifting set of lyrics about loneliness ("Winter's warmth brings sadness, comfort Kathy through madness/ See the beauty of the falls, Tony never saw it all").

"Mermaid" returns to house piano and the rhythm section's twists and turns, while "Further Away" takes the garage-rock sound that made the quintet famous and unravels it into a jam of nearly fourteen minutes, running through every possible shade of it (from the minimalist interlude to the furious finale).

An instrumental ambient piece, "Dreams Are All We Have", closes things out in style.

After a period of rest, useful for gathering their thoughts, the band begins work on their third album, Revenge Of The Goldfishwhich comes out in October ’92. Although it only peaks at number 17, it finds in “Dragging Me Down” a decently successful single. It will become one of the most requested songs at their live shows, convincing the band of the merits of the whole operation. The arrangement sits at the perfect crossroads between garage rock and house music, the bass line overflowing, the chorus triumphant: what more could you ask of an alternative pop song?

Having shed the ambitions and gloom of the previous record, the tracklist lines up a series of instantly catchy choruses with barely a moment to breathe: “Generations”, “Saviour” and “Little Disappeared” are full-on power pop assaults, “Two World Collides” slows the pace but gains in pathos, and “Here Comes The Flood” is more or less their stab at a Western theme. The whole record is steeped in a choral quality reminiscent of the Rem and it almost sounds like an exchange of favours, given that the year before Michael Stipe and co. had released “Radio Song”, in full Madchester style.

In their sabbatical year of 1993 the band released only one single, “How It Should Be”, which went practically unnoticed. A shame, because it's one of their fastest and most spirited tracks ever (qualities the Inspirals never skimped on anyway); it deserved far better luck.

Either way, March ’94 seems to bring a small revival: the new album, Devil Hopping, puts them back in the top 10. Overall it's a more varied record than its predecessor, without giving up their most immediate songwriting form.

The irresistible “Saturn 5” is a sort of “I’m A Believer” for its era britpop, while the pounding “I Don’t Want To Go Blind”, coloured with chill-out-compilation keyboards, does indeed seem to be about exactly what its title suggests. If “Uniform” features one of their most subdued verses, “I Want You” is anything but subdued - perhaps their hardest track ever, edging close to noise rock. Released as a single, it features the distorted voice of Mark E. Smith of the Fall, though many consider the album version, with Hingley alone, to have more room to breathe and be, on the whole, the better one.

Unfortunately, with the britpop revolution now well underway, Mute no longer shows faith in the Inspiral Carpets project and drops them towards the end of 1995, after releasing a compilation. And yet several of the sounds found on Devil Hopping seemed to show a willingness to try their hand at the new British pop.

The band splits up right after being dropped by the label, only to reform in 2003. For the occasion the compilation is released, Cool As. The first disc features all the band's singles (seven of which were never included on any album), the second a selection of their best B-sides. Alongside the better-known tracks, some surprising alternate versions emerge, including "Directing Traffic" (here without the k), with a markedly rawer sound, and "Sackville", without the infamous riffs electric organ, but with a previously unreleased, superb choral arrangement.

On the whole, this is an indispensable compilation, since it brings together for the first time under one title a large number of hard-to-find songs that are nonetheless essential to the band's story. Worth picking up even if you already own all four of their main albums.

For years the reunited line-up went around playing the old hits, until 2011, when Hingley decided to quit again. Surprisingly, he was replaced by the band's original singer, Stephen Holt, with whom the group had stayed on good terms. After three further years of touring and a couple of singles, the release of a new album, Inspiral Carpets, was announced for October 2014.

What you notice from the very first listen is the budget the album was recorded with, enough to allow for a professional, flawlessly produced record, but still far from the firepower that made the care lavished on their classic works possible. Where the tempo stays brisk, there's still plenty of fun to be had, even if Holt's voice can't match the nuance of Hingley's. "Spitfire", "You're So Good To Me" and "Calling Out To You" are all scrappy garage rock, with the electric organ more abrasive than ever and choral crescendos as gripping as in the old days. Sure, the exploratory spirit that once drove them is long gone, sure, the slower passages struggle to hold your attention, sure, the sound is perhaps overly homogeneous. Still, the quality of certain melodies is enough to forgive the admittedly obvious flaws, and besides, these are tracks that blend perfectly with the old classics in a live setting, as shown by the band's recent shows, where there's no dip in energy to be found.

Today the Inspiral Carpets are glorious survivors. They embodied one of the most turbulent eras in English rock, the one that collided with house music and, above all, with an outrageous quantity of drugs, perhaps more than ever before. The ecstasy generation, the smiley generation, the rave generation. But also the generation of melancholy, the one that seeped through the English suburbs and the lower rungs of the working class, battered and broken after the Eighties. The melancholy you can feel in a film like "24 Hour Party People", in the scene where Tony Wilson is forced to shut the doors of his legendary club, The Haçienda, shattering once and for all the dream of those who grew up during that era of unforgettable crossbreeding between dance, rock and psychedelic visions.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favourite Sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and the latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

Share on

This article is an English translation of the original Italian text, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition

Inspiral Carpets on OndaRock

Discography

Plane Crash (EP, Playtime, 1988)
Trainsurfing (EP, Cow, 1989)
Dung 4 (demo, Cow, 1989)
Life (Mute, 1990)
Cool As **** (EP, Mute, 1990)
Island Head (EP, Mute, 1990)
The Beast Inside (Mute, 1991)
Revenge Of The Goldfish (Mute, 1992)
Devil Hopping (Mute, 1994)
Cool As (anthology, Mute, 2003)
Inspiral Carpets (Cherry Red, 2014)