Live Review: Mr Mojo's Risin': Spacemanantics, We Move Walls, Little Skye, The Silent World, Delay Delay

Thank God for Mojo's. There's not a whole lot of venues in Perth that will charge you six bucks for a beer, vote on the best painting of a cow and catch some sweet tunes all in the same night. The Arts Management Student Organisation pulled off one hell of a night, with some great bands delivering the panache we've come to expect from the iconic venue.

Delay Delay kicked things off, with their slow, melodic tunes catching the ears of the first punters to rock up. Their name sums it up: a double-act with a shitload of effects throwing slinky rhythm and guitar lines into a vortex of spaced-out goodness.

Next up were guitar-laden post-rockers The Silent World, returning from a fairly lengthy hiatus. It's very easy for something to go wrong when you're sound balances on the knife edge of extremely intricate three-guitar melodies and a busting rhythm section, but the guys managed to hold down the entire set. Bursting with raw energy and technical aptitude, it's about time the band got to work on new material, and hopefully a few more gigs.

Things were toned down and made pretty bloody beautiful by Little Skye. Fronted by sister duo Ashby (guitar,vocals) and India (violin, backing vocals) Ranson, the band finds strong ground between pastoral-ish folk and poppy indie harmonics. Ashby is the heart of the band, her emotive voice and heartfelt lyricism ringing true with the enamoured audience.

We Move Walls are a great band, full stop. They prove that you don't need a huge stage setup to make good noise; the three-piece belted out some slightly shoegazy garage numbers with aplomb, their explosive rhythmic tone shaking Mojo's walls. With the crowd now mingling between front and back of the venue, they had a bit of space in front of the stage, but that gave them all the more reason to fill it with their syrupy tunes.

SpaceManAntics have become a favourite in the local scene as of late, not least because their psych-rock sound is as surreally cosmic as a Parliament stage show. Long, frizzy hair, Humbuckers and wingtips aplenty, all smothered in jammy, fuzzed out-waves of guitar noise and expansive drum fills; that's the SpaceManAntics philosophy. Their tracks do stretch out, however, and can drone on and on in the repetitive bits, which admittedly is a callsign of psych music, but the guys would do well for including more variation in their songs.

With two lucky ducks taking away a Southbound ticket (for the aforementioned cow paintings) and a bottle of rum, it seemed that the night pretty much hit the celebratory nail on the head. Good stuff.