Somewhere over on the other side of the country there’s a pretty big gathering of musicians and industry types letting each other know how great they are via shiny, pointy doorstops. But while Silverchair, John Butler and Sneaky Sound System are the talk of the town in Sydney, there’s only one band on people’s minds in Fremantle: The Panics.

We all know the legend. Happy Mondays drummer Gaz Whelan was in Perth with friend Pete Carroll after playing the 2001 Big Day Out. They took a wander down to the pub and took a shining to the band playing across the room. But while The Panics have achieved a huge amount for a band with plenty of years ahead of them, there’s always been the fear that they’d be another one of those bands who’d have to make it overseas before Australia would take any notice. But while that may have been the case with stunning debut album A House On a Street in a Town I’m From and follow-up Sleeps Like a Curse, it’s all started falling into place with new LP Cruel Guards.

And that’s certainly evident from tonight’s setlist. Their relatively short set (no thanks to Fremantle’s 10pm Sunday curfew) took nine of the 10 Cruel Guards tracks and offered just three tracks from Sleeps Like a Curse and none from A House On a Street…. A risky move: regardless of how well your new album is selling, a homecoming gig in Perth’s tight-knit music scene is a homecoming gig.

But with the calibre of tracks on Cruel Guards, you got the idea The Panics could play the new album from start to finish and still have the capacity crowd leave happy. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case with My Best Mistake and Twin Sisters (“this song is by John Butler”) coming early on to ease the band’s longer-term fans into the Dew Process-era Panics material.

But while the early stages of the set alternated between Cruel Guards material and older songs, the band delivered a string of new tracks at the halfway point that no doubt sold more than a few albums at the end of the gig. With frontman Jae Laffer moving onto keys for much of the new material, the rich organ sounds joined with harmonies from bassist Paul Otway and guitarist Jules Douglas to recreate the lush studio arrangements for the live setting without leaving anything to want. And lingering behind Laffer, Otway and Douglas were the Wootton brothers – Myles on drums and Drew, the rubber-necked guitarist responsible the for guitar sounds that echo John Squire ( Creaks ) and Nick McCabe ( Sundowner ).

With the small hand of the clock teetering unnervingly toward the 10, the crowd’s approval had already been won and the closing minutes presented a chance to cap off a successful return to WA. But instead of turning the clocks back for the likes of crowd favourites Kid You’re a Dreamer, How’s it Feel? and This Day Last Year, the hills five-piece chose to go for Cash and In Your Head from the Crack in the Wall EP (2004), before ditching the Screamadelica brass on current single Don’t Fight it for a slow, creeping organ build-up that echoed the sounds of those first two albums. And to complete the job it was The General Calling from Sleeps Like a Curse, its reverb-soaked guitars milking every last second as venue staff played their light switch card in a futile attempt to clear the floor.