These two hotly tipped bands both take 1960s girl groups as a musical jump-off point, then leap in vastly different directions. Liverpool four-piece Johnny Boy are produced by James Dean Bradfield; they suggest Manic Street Preachers' clenched intensity channelled through the nubile melodies of the Shangri-Las. The two vocalists, Davo and Lolly, are a brilliantly bolshie duo, crooning oblique anti-consumerist critiques over tough art-rock. The tidal choruses of Fifteen Minutes and War on Want are Tamla Motown with anger-management issues, while debut single You Are the Generation That Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve is as incendiary as a firebomb attack on the Vogue office.

Lucky Soul take a more studied approach to 60s pop classicism. Five dapper gents and one peroxided femme fatale, they play exquisitely understated songs about heartache, loneliness and smalltown despair with élan and piquant precision, as if Petula Clark had been touched by Phil Spector's production alchemy. Singer Adi Howard makes the Ronettes-like One Kiss Don't Make a Summer sound both glacial and intimate, before cooing through the flawless ache of Baby I'm Broke.

Lucky Soul may be a period piece, but they are a supremely crafted one. They encore with The Killing Moon, Echo and the Bunnymen's immaculate nugget of moody, mid-80s pop, and it shines for the same reason that tonight is a sweeping triumph: it's the songs, stupid.

· Lucky Soul are at Middlesbrough Music Live festival on June 3. Details: middlesbroughmusiclive.co.uk