Live Review: Emperors @ Amplifier

Emperors' Stay Frosty album launch was anything but cold. The Amps stage jammed in five of Perth's newest and best rock bands under four hours - talk about a hot flush!

Mezzanine brought rawness with smooth vocals. The mix of vox purity and the distorted jams of Novella and Can't Feel A Thing provided the perfect remedy for the sessile and stagnant. Dead Owls won hearts with a likeness to Bright Eyes' simple and untainted vocals but with an Australian accent, jiving out punk emotion. Single, Final Thoughts, had you high on effect peddles and liquid drums.

Beat-around-the-tracks band, Will Stoker & The Embers, almost stole Emperors' limelight due to sheer ego. The Growl's Cam Avery stood in to drum in total jam mode. Man, Stoker can strut it; despite the fierce, cream-your-jeans rock of Tickets Please and Ten Thousand Horses, what really engaged was the sheer pretentious entertainment of his red wine necking, dance adventures into the audience and Iggy Pop/Mick Jagger dance moves, complete with mic throwing to boot.

Home-grown Sonpsilo Circus then kicked off with the psychedelic wonders of Your Mother Built The Sky. Things got so fancifully fun that the front man broke a string and called out for another guitar, while bass and drums kept it real with an unexpected, lyric-less cover of Let Me Go Wild. Crowd favourite, Silverspoon, has somewhat become the boys' trademark riff, and why the heck not? It proved to be loveably catchy with its fun fair bridge.

Emperors played their best live set this scribe's witnessed. It couldn't have been timelier as Stay Frosty was both triple j's feature album and RTRFM's Drivetime feature album for the week gone. They were stronger than ever with '90s pop rock power chords and symbol-heavy drums. Girl-boy harmonies were bang on in every song. The heaviness of Drug Mule balanced out the late night indie side-stepper lick of Fight Me Back. I'm Not Dead had a Foo Fighters vibe and Be Ready When I Say Go was evidently the all-awaited track of the night with Plastic Guns just behind, nipping at its heels. The night was all about Emperors, who most certainly conquered, but it also saw Will Stoker & The Embers ruling many punters' fancies.