They were groovin’ in Manchester, England (and consequently on American college radio) in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s.

There was a certain sound coming from groups like Charlatans U.K., The Happy Mondays, The Inspiral Carpets, and the leaders of the charge – The Stone Roses – all blending tasty dance beats with ringing, neo-‘60s hooks, all with singers emitting that trademark, detached, British snottiness.

On this side of the pond, The Stone Roses’ influence has been obscured by time. But it should be pointed out that they were such darlings in their homeland that The Cure, who had a style indisputably all their own, unabashedly paid tribute to The Stone Roses’ sound with the single “Never Enough” in 1990.

Once drawing an audience of 30,000 Britons at a festival concert in 1990, The Stone Roses made such an impact on English rock that a 20^th anniversary re-issue of their eponymous debut album - with the Jackson Pollock-inspired cover art - was released in 2009.

Since the band, led by singer Ian Brown and guitarist John Squire, eventually imploded from the effects of wrangling with their record labels, an important question is, is this album worthy of two-decade nostalgia? Surprisingly, yes. It’s still for the most part fresh and innovative, and stands up to the test of time, even though the band itself did not.

 “The Stone Roses” 20^th anniversary edition bears the running order of the original UK LP, and comes with a second “Release Highlights” CD, compiling songs of that era that were originally only issued as seven-inch singles, plus demo versions of the signature songs “I Wanna be Adored,” “She Bangs the Drums” and “Waterfall.”

The seductive “I Wanna be Adored” begins the album with eerie clattering effects that evoke a ghostly train rolling by. “I don’t have/to sell my soul/he’s already in me,” Brown sings.

Whoa, what is that all about?

Right as the band starts building to a climactic ending, Brown hypnotically croons: “You adore me … I wanna be adored/I wan-ner/I WAWN-ner …” He’s not politely asking, he’s burning and yearning.

Yeah, there’s a dated lyrical reference to vinyl - a needle hitting a groove - in “She Bangs the Drums,” but I dare you to resist that bass hook and the big, bright and airy refrain: “Have you seen/or have you heard/the way she plays/there are no words/ to describe the way I feel.”

The Stone Roses are at their jangly best on “Waterfall,” which like “She Bangs the Drums,” is a sneaky kind of love song.

It takes a lot of cheekiness to pull off “Don’t Stop.” Darn it if they didn’t roll “Waterfall” backwards and write a “new” song over top of it. They don’t even try all that hard to conceal what they’re doing either because you can occasionally hear the forward vocals of “Don’t Stop” running concurrently with the backward “Waterfall” vocals. 

The Stone Roses were prone to bouts of long-windedness. There’s the odd stop-and-start jam tacked onto the end of “I am the Resurrection” which makes it run in excess of eight minutes. And we are spared the nine-minute version of “Fools Gold,” which was a bonus track on the original album, in favor of the more reasonable four-minute version on the anniversary edition second disc. However, there’s no escaping the “full length,” seven-minute single “One Love,” also on disc two.

With that kind of dance club-oriented rambling, it’s shocking that the band inserts a quiet-but-sinister, 59-second knockoff of “Scarborough Fair,” titled “Elizabeth My Dear,” smack in the middle of the album.

Other highlights of “The Stone Roses” include the slinky shuffle of “Shoot You Down” and the chiming, semi-psychedelic optimism of “This is the One.”

The Stone Roses were alternately brilliant and maddeningly arrogant. Where they left off on their messianic complex with “I am the Resurrection,” they picked up five years later with an album titled “Second Coming,” which was delayed thanks to a legal battle with Silvertone Records, who finally set the band free to sign with Geffen. Then they took so long to get “Second Coming” together that Geffen had to pressure The Stone Roses to complete it.

Silvertone does a nice job with “The Stone Roses” re-issue. A golden opportunity they missed out on, however, was to punch the 20^th anniversary harder by including a booklet with a bio, photos and lyrics. Fortunately, you can get those at www.thestoneroses.co.uk.

One can only imagine what this group might have accomplished, given the right set of circumstances.