Julie Anne Campbell (a.k.a. Lonelady) did her Mancunian musical forerunners proud at Headrow House on Saturday night. Hailing from the hometown of The Smiths, The Fall, and The Stone Roses, Lonelady proves there is still great and innovative music emerging out of Manchester. Pounding through a selection of tracks from her latest release ‘Hinterland’, successor to 2010’s debut ‘Nerve Up,’ Lonelady delves into the realms of post-punk psychedelia with an angst and dynamism reminiscent of Joy Division’s ‘Isolation’. You could almost picture Ian Curtis shaking away in the front stalls to ‘Bunkerpop’. This, in combination with some filthy funk bass-lines, evocative of early Talking Heads and jangly Nile Roger-esque guitar provided the perfect recipe for a blistering live performance. Thundering through a blaze of tunes, Lonelady is relentless in pace, uttering only at the end of her set a short “thank you for coming.” Cool and commanding, her limited interactions only added mysticism to her onstage persona, secreted further in a sea of smoke machines and vibrant blue and red strobes. However, it was the percussive discothèque thump and chunky bass throbs, slumped on top of a multilayer of cowbells, shakers, wet 80’s beats and sampled electronic wobbles that immersed the crowd in an inexorable groove. The catchy and beguiling blues licks of numbers such as ‘Groove It Out’ and ‘Into the Cave’ relayed elements of traditional African music: Songhoy Blues would not sound out of place as a support act. Both compelling and energetic, there were no complaints from the crowd when the band plunged into an extended five minute outro of ‘Hinterland.’ Yet, there’s something strange about a funk artist embracing a concept regarding a post-nuclear dystopia. Despite Lonelady’s lyrics which communicate at length of “fencless wastelands,” and the bleak landscapes of a scorched industrial heartland, her melodies in parallel broadcast a soulful warmth and unstoppable vitality.

Anton Witchell-Chibber