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The Carpettes

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Tyne and Wear punk outfit going since 1977, back on the road decades later with the same terse, melodic three-chord urgency.

The Carpettes formed in 1977 in Houghton-le-Spring, Tyne and Wear, built around Neil Thompson on vocals and guitar, George Maddison on bass and Kevin Heard on drums, who had already played together since 1974 in a band called Brown Sugar. Their first release was the Radio Wunderbar EP on the Walthamstow label Small Wonder, followed by a single named 'Small Wonder' in the label's honour.

They recorded two sessions for John Peel's Radio 1 show in 1978, with Heard replaced by Tim Wilder as drummer between the two. Signing to Beggars Banquet in 1979, they released their debut album Frustration Paradise that year, followed by a second album in 1980 and a final single before splitting in June 1981.

Their material leans towards the melodic, tuneful end of punk rather than the confrontational one, with short songs, plain guitar arrangements and vocal hooks close to power pop.

The band reformed in 1996, with Thompson's brother Paul joining the lineup, a shift that became permanent and led to the album Fair Play to 'Em in 2002. Neil Thompson left in 2005, replaced by Jimmy Devlin, and a further album was recorded with Paul Thompson and Jim Cosgrove before release on the Texas label NDN and a German tour.

In 2009 Maddison and Devlin put three new songs online, and in 2011 the band made its first US tour, covering roughly four thousand miles across twelve shows in cities including Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

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