This year, the surviving band members finally feel able to gig again, although the experience is bound to be an emotional one. Their UK tour dates have been billed as a a chance to commemorate Craig’s life as well as “a celebration of the music we created, which has brought so much joy to people over the last 34 years”. Hingley had parted company with the band permanently by 2011, and Holt returned to the fold. He sang that year’s single release, You’re so good for me, a pleasing and angular piece of electro-pop with a side serving of Joy Division slashed across by Lambert’s guitar. The group has been bold, exploring a range of dance genres that reflect their wider influences or interests, such as dub. My new musical education involved inhaling anything and everything that looked northwards. I stared enraptured at Top of the Pops whenever it featured lanky men dressed in psychedelic shirts, bearing down on keyboards as their long hair flopped over their faces. In solidarity with the newly-labelled ‘Madchester’ and ‘Baggy’ scenes, I wore dungarees and floral shirts, yearned to be bought an acid house T-shirt, and read avidly of the Hacienda in Smash Hits magazine. I wanted in. However, it was Hingley who enjoyed the glory of the Inspirals’ most commercially fertile period from debut album Life in 1990 to 1994’s Devil Hopping.

Caravan’, from their second album The Beast Inside, was not a huge hit (position 30 in the UK singles chart), but it will certainly get you up and dancing. Get your baggy jeans out and do some quality shoegazing! The song has a Happy Mondays feel to it – somewhere between ‘Kinky Afro’ and ‘Hallelujah’. I’m wary when making comparisons to either the Mondays or The Stone Roses. All three bands were thrust into the public’s consciousness from the Madchester scene in the late 1980s, sometimes referred to as the Holy Triumvirate. The Inspiral Carpets were sometimes considered the lesser of the three bands, something I always felt was completely unjustified and wholly unfair. They were simply different. It’s interesting, I think, to look at bands in their specific socio-economic context. Inspiral Carpets hailed in the main from Oldham, north-east Manchester. At the time of the band members’ youth, it was in the process of deindustrialisation, having been one of the most productive cotton mill towns in the world. The music coming out of this region in the 20th century was by turns angry, vital and uplifting. But a terrible personal blow was to come for the Inspirals in November 2016. Craig Gill took his own life at the age of 44, having been dealing with the debilitating effects of tinnitus for 20 years. He’d been a mainstay in the band for 30 years, having joined at just 14.* Dragging me Down suits a harder dance beat and I can imagine this version bringing a new generation to their feet on the dancefloor; ditto Caravan which is given a housey spin. I particularly enjoyed the techno-inflected remix of Changes by the band’s Martyn Walsh and Simon Lyon.The catchy bass-led rhythm of Weakness (which appeared on the US-issue of Life) gives way to a full-throttle chorus calling to mind Reward by The Teardrop Explodes, though this is unmistakably Inspirals territory, with Boon’s swirling keyboard softening guitar and drum edges, even though the lyrics still point to life’s challenges: “Phone rings in an empty house, there’s no one there/ Letter falls on a pile on the floor, everything’s been sold/Evening comes to a lonely street, this emptiness is yours YOU’RE THE WEAKNESS (WEAKNESS)”. It’s definitely one of my favourites. As with any northern band worth their salt, weaved in amongst the life-affirming music are lyrics mined from a deep vein of social conscience and a sense of specific geography. Joe calls to mind the reality of poverty: “All that I possess is my existence, vagrant more or less/Children on the pave, mither bad, but help me through my day/BECAUSE I’M JOE, THE STREET LAMP IS MY HOME/FROM PLACE TO PLACE I LIKE TO ROAM.” Drummer Gill, incredibly knowledgeable in the industrial and cultural heritage of his hometown, became a specialist tour guide later on and saw connections between these seemingly disparate themes. During an interview he gave to Visit Manchester in 2013, he made the link from band to band, era to era, going some way to explaining how the city’s energy and vitality developed. Always so full of life and zest, this collection ably reminds why Inspiral Carpets were so much more than the band Noel Gallagher used to roadie for. The Complete Singles is released alongside a reunion tour which is a commemoration of the life of drummer Craig Gill who sadly passed away in 2016.

The chronological collection follows their progress with early, non-album singles setting the foundations for their sound from the outset. Keep The Circle Around has a purpose and direction with the Hammond organ, so omnipresent throughout their career, high in the mix where it would stay. Likewise, Butterfly has a driving momentum while the juddering Joe broadened the sound and tempo. The rest of this collection consists of some superb remixes for the clubber in us all. We get a couple of bangers including The Go! Team remix of This Is How It Feels, a bit of dub on Dubville and an excellent Changes remix from Martyn Walsh and Simon Lyon. A funky end to a sprawling collection of hits that tell you the tale of a band who hit the heights and are still loved today. A great start for any newcomers to Inspiral Carpets. Reflecting the era, or perhaps more their youthful restlessness, by 1991 Inspiral Carpets were developing at a rate of knots; Caravan was more proficient and ambitious with widescreen intentions while on Please Be Cruel, Tom Hingley’s vocals were more considered and, for want of a better word, professional. from keep the circle around, through the chart hits this is how it feels, two world's collide, saturn 5, i want you featuring mark e smith to the last single let you down featuring john cooper clarke.While it’s fair to say they didn’t burn as brightly or have the same cultural impact as the Stone Roses, or fuse as many different artistic ideas (nor make as many headlines) as the Happy Mondays, this appraisal of their legacy (their first singles compilation in 20 years) seems long overdue. The 24 th of April 1991 will be a day I’ll never forget. It was my first-ever gig. The band? Inspiral Carpets. I was chuffed to little bits that they were playing in my home town. After hearing the single ‘Joe’ on The Chart Show (remember that?), I was intrigued. Their first album, Life, had been released one year and one day before that fateful night. By the time the gig came around, I was a devotee, though I don’t think I have ever been Cool as F**k! Inspiral Carpets return with a new compilation of their singles with added remixes from John Da Silva, The Go Team and Martyn Walsh & Simon Lyon. Wayne AF Carey steps into his time machine again… By the time of Dragging Me Down, the Inspiral Carpets had been in existence in one form or another for close to 10 years, having issued a demo, Cow, in 1987 and demo album, Dung 4, in 1989. Three songs from Dung 4, Keep the Circle Around, Joe and Butterfly, have made it onto this compilation (though Joe was re-recorded in 1995). Sadly, despite straddling both Madchester and Britpop with some success, Inspiral Carpets were dropped by their label in 1995, although they have since released some strong singles, not least Let You Down from 2015, featuring a guest appearance from a typically insolent John Cooper Clarke.