Stop the press. If The Silents’ forthcoming debut album sounds as good as they do tonight, they won’t be playing at venues like Mojo’s ever again. While the defining feature of Perth’s scene in recent years has been diversity, the best bands to come out of WA have all had the kind of drive, professionalism and sophistication you can only get when you live in the most isolated city on the planet.

Tonight’s first support act is testament to this. Abbe May, Abbe Fuzz, with or without The Perth Mint or The Rockin’ Pneumonia; whatever form she takes on, she always delivers. Mink Mussel Creek follow, and this band could well be in The Silents’ spot in a couple of years’ time. They’re still young and malleable and, like a lump of fresh clay their sound is just begging to be turned into songs. Yes, they stop playing every three or four minutes but throughout the course of their set it’s as though they’re jamming in a rehearsal room and not playing in front of a crowd. The four members trade instruments and improvise for half an hour or so and, while they could do with a bit more structure, their disregard for the rules is all part of the appeal.

But it’s The Silents that hold all aces. Over the past three years or so they’ve been refining their set, weeding out the weak songs and replacing them with tracks that make use of the full range of talents on offer. Though the Flicker and Flames EP was released last year, it was recorded almost two years prior to that and the changes since then have been major. Tonight’s set only includes two songs from that era – Little People and radio hit Nightcrawl and instead of the cute With the Beatles-type pop numbers, the band’s set tonight uses Tomorrow Never Knows as year zero and runs from there.

Though there are still shades of retro and psychedelic in everything they do, The Silents’ finished product manages to sound fresh and modern throughout. While that could be due to the individual contribution of any one member, it’s possible that The Silents stand out so much simply because nobody has made music this good for a very long time. The songwriting is top-notch, woven around chord structures that most indie bands couldn’t discover in a thousand years. The guitar hooks, a throwback to the 1960s and 1970s, give each song a sense of purpose and character and the band’s rhythm section provides a formidable backbone and ensures you can still tap your feet at all times.

Tonight’s performance features several new tracks, including Generation Space, which is up there with the band’s best. And after the first tempo change it’s pretty clear this song will be a highlight on the album. With the healthy Sunday night crowd still gasping, they debut Turn Black, a fairly simplistic acoustic number heavy on harmonies. As the track winds up, guitarist Jamie Terry chirps in with a slew of random noise. “I don’t get to play in that one,” he says. Not too dissimilar to the time Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood got bored with a song called Creep...

Over almost an hour on stage, The Silents pull out 12 tracks that could easily form the tracklisting of their debut LP, which, we’re promised, will come out later this year. If the album is anything like the show we’ve seen tonight, we’ll see one of the best releases of the year.