Toxikon’s Gallery

On this beautiful night, Mellen Events had found the perfect venue for a night of beautiful music, with the lights of Perth city bouncing off the river making the perfect back drop. Whitley wandered out on-stage to a modest crowd, and waltzed through material from his debut album The Submarine and a heavy portion of awesome follow up Go Forth, Find Mammoth.

After a short break, The Beautiful Girls took up where Whitley left off, drifting through a fine tasting set, the all bowler hat wearing three piece made their way through Black Bird. A major highlight was the cranking trumpet section who rolled throughout the set. The Beautiful Girls seem to like teasing the crowd, injecting snippets of Madonna’s Like A Prayer, Phil Collins’ In The Air Tonight and at encore time, Pearl Jam’s Alive before delving into their own rousing instrumental ending.

FDEL was a fantastic choice for in-between set crowd work overs, fusing funk and hip hop anthems to the crowd’s delight, keeping feet moving whilst the following act’s equipment was set up. It didn’t take long though, before headliners; The Cat Empire strolled on-stage and into a rousing rendition of So Many Nights before cascading into Till the Oceans Take us all.

Though it was a beautiful venue, the quality of sound was a let down at certain points due to the echo around the back part of the venue. It didn’t tarnish the show for the faithful when new song Conner was released on them, a very funky little track, -keep an ear out for this one. The Wine Song was beautiful, and even though front man Felix Riebl was wearing a wife beater, none of the elegance was lost.

Finishing off the main set was Sly which turned the riverside into a carnival type fiesta, with the whole crowd on their feet chanting the familiar party chorus. After a short break, the boys returned to the stage to perform The Darkness before rounding out with crowd favourite The Chariot, leaving everybody feeling good as punters flooded into the city lights, oh what a beautiful night in our fair city of Perth.

Toxikon’s Gallery