“People Like Us” opens with a funky guitar line that cuts right through whatever else is happening around you. By the time the drums hit and those synths slide in, you’re already locked in. Then Rowetta’s voice arrives and you actually feel it. Not in some flowery way, just the reality of a voice that knows how to command a room.

It begins cool and measured, almost controlled, then builds into something you can’t look away from. The synths aren’t there just to sound pretty. They’re doing real work in the mix, and the rhythm section underneath creates this groove that makes you want to move without asking permission. It’s the kind of track that reveals new details the more you listen to it.

Concrete Club have spent the last couple of years grinding it out in Manchester’s underground, and it shows. They’ve built something real by refusing to compromise, by keeping the rough edges intact rather than buffing everything down to nothing. Their songs dig into actual life. City exhaustion. Nights that don’t have clear endings. The mess of trying to find solid ground in chaos. “People Like Us” fits perfectly into that world they’ve been building, but it also feels bigger somehow, like it’s speaking to something everyone understands.

Jonny Brewster’s vocals are there at the core, with Kallum Delf on guitar, Mark Demuth holding down the bass, and Jamie Butterworth on synths. For this one they brought Rowetta in to share the vocal duties and Jonny McGill to drive the drums, which gives the track an extra spark of energy. It could have felt like too many cooks, but instead it all feels intentional. The song is unmistakably Concrete Club, just with more people in the room.

This is the kind of record that works because it doesn’t overthink itself. It just moves forward with purpose.