INSPIRAL CARPETS & FLORAL IMAGE LIVE.

 

On the evening of Friday 25 August 2023 in Norwich, hallucinogenic sights and sounds, not to mention paisley shirts, were very definitely back in vogue. Epic Studios played host to two seminal psychedelic bands, hardy perennial Inspiral Carpets, led by Clint Boon (above), and Norwich’s own Floral Image.

The latter (below) offer soaring, mind-bending guitar odysseys and spacey, echoed vocals that bring to mind The Electric Prunes, Hawkwind and Spiritualized. What makes Floral Image stand out, though, are their urgent, driving rhythms that place them closer to The Stones Roses at their most symphonic. The majestic ‘Voices’ is perhaps their signature track, combining the best of classic and neo psychedelia.

Inspiral Carpets’ music exists in a perfectly formed time capsule, which means they sound as good and as relevant in the 21st century as they did in the last years of the preceding one. They weren’t really part of the druggy Madchester scene (they come from Oldham) although their EP title ‘Cool as Fuck’ became one of its banner statements. With a sound built around Clint Boon’s retro Farfisa organ and Graham Lambert’s choppy guitar riffs, their songs were often a lot bleaker than the stoner musings of Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses. What’s often overlooked is that, in their original residency in the charts, they made more albums and had more singles in the top 75 – 16, no less – then either of the Madchester dance floor titans.

 

Looking at the lyrics of some of their songs, it makes you wonder what they’d been through before their fifth single, ‘This Is How It Feels,’ was a hit – a catalogue of council estate desperation ending in suicide. From their second album, ‘The Beast Inside’ is a mournful look at the dark side of human nature – “A man is no man if he doesn’t have a beast inside” – while, from their first, the perhaps cynically titled Life, ‘Sackville’ bitterly contrasts the slum underclass with the innocence of childhood. Then again, the band have a playful, celebratory side; the life-affirming ‘Saturn 5’ honours the 1969 moon landing while, on ‘Lovegrove’, the Inspirals remain the only band to pay tribute to ‘The Ubiquitous Mr Lovegrove’, the trippy episode of the 1960s spy series Danger Man.

 

Their set is built around the singles – they play just over half the number of their top 75 entries, complemented by, pleasingly, rarities ‘Weakness’ and ‘Butterfly’. There’s only one track from the 2014 album Inspiral Carpets, their only LP so far to feature original singer Stephen Holt (below right), but it’s an absolute belter, their collaboration with Manchester’s resident punk poet John Cooper Clarke, ‘Let You Down’. The dependably spiky-haired aesthete himself appears courtesy of a screen behind the band which, throughout the evening, hosts some wondrous psychedelic graphics. The band didn’t play my personal favourite ‘Come Back Tomorrow’, but no Inspirals fan would have gone home disappointed with what was on offer tonight. They even threw in a cover of ? and the Mysterians’ ‘96 Tears’, the 1960s’ garage rock classic that, I think Clint would affirm, was largely the blueprint for the Inspirals’ sound.

 

The keyboard maestro mentions that Epic used to belong to Anglia Television and was the venue for the legendarily kitsch quiz show Sale of the Century, hosted by the equally legendary Nicholas Parsons, who was able to froth enthusiastically about purchasing a fridge freezer at a bargain price. It’s fitting, then, that, like Parsons, Clint plays the convivial host, supplying a variety of anecdotes between songs. My favourite concerned another Manchester alumnus, the cantankerous Mark E Smith of The Fall, who supplied guest vocals for the Inspirals’ 1994 single ‘I Want You’. “An absolute genius”, Clint remarked drolly, “but you try spending an hour in a room with him.”

 

The band are something of a family affair these days, as Clint’s son Oscar now plays bass. Looking around, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few families in the audience, as, from what I could see, the age range encompassed teenagers to late middle age. Nearly thirty years on from the Inspirals’ heyday, the generations (if you’ll forgive the pun) on display tonight are a heart-warming testament to the durability and longevity of the band’s music. As Clint and co. sent us home with the elegiac ‘Saturn 5’, I’ll swear the entire audience was jumping up and down as one and singing their hearts out.

Only one caveat, really: I’d like to hear more album tracks, as there are some corkers like ‘Sleep Well Tonight’, ‘Further Away’, ‘Just Wednesday’ and, of course, ‘Lovegrove’ in the Inspirals’ back catalogue more than overdue a live revival. But then, people want to hear the hits, and – as the Carpets have so many – that’s entirely fair enough.

 

Whatever. Next time they play Norwich, I’ll make sure I’m down the front again. Bands like this really should be cherished while they’re around.

Photographs © Robert Fairclough 2023