When Tony Wilson was boss of Manchester's legendary Factory Records he compared signing Joy Division, New Order and Happy Mondays to "winning the pools three times". However, Wilson wasn't driven by commerce: he recruited artists he felt needed to be heard.
This policy explains why oddball Dutch band Minny Pops were also on the label – and, 30 years later, on this bill of former Factory acts. The Pops' edgy electronica and their tall, black-shirted, frontman, Wally van Middendorp – a daft, dancing cross between Ian Curtis and Mr Bean – prove a weirdly compulsive combination. Van Middendorp celebrates the occasion by pouring a litre of water over his head.
Perhaps if they'd not been overshadowed by Joy Division and had such a daft name, dark psychedelists Crispy Ambulance would have had a better fate than being immortalised in a Half Man Half Biscuit track ("You're going on after Crispy Ambulance!"). The reformed, re-energised foursome emit a driven intensity rarely heard from alienated teens, never mind men in their 50s.
The night's revelation, though, is Section 25. The group were once doomy post-punks whose 1982 electronic album From the Hip anticipated house music and thrilled New York clubland. Now the deaths of singers Larry and Jenny Cassidy have inspired their daughter Bethany to carry on the family business and give the band a makeover. The collision of the two original members' brittle rhythms and the angelic voices of Bethany and similarly fresh-faced co-singer Jo takes recent material and songs from the repertoire into shimmering club-pop heaven. Beer-swigging Cassidy's effervescent, perhaps tipsy joie de vivre even triumphs over tragedy ("It was my Dad's birthday yesterday. Yay! He would have been 61. Yay!"), and they sound like the best new/old band in Britain. If Wilson were still with us, he'd have surely signed them on the spot.
• Section 25 play Blackpool Cricket Club on 25 May.
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