LIVE: THE STREETS – Fremantle | Walyalup, 8 March 2026

LIVE: THE STREETS – Fremantle | Walyalup, 8 March 2026
Fremantle Arts Centre, Western Australia
Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar
Photography by Damien Crocker

Mike Skinner’s The Streets return to his “home away from home”, Australia, this time playing seminal second album, 2004’s A Grand Don’t Come For Free in full. It’s a rollercoaster ride of a rock opera – or, more precisely, a garage/hip hop opera – that revolves around Skinner losing a thousand pound in cash. He suspects one of his friends may have taken the cash, starts a new relationship, gambles hard to try to make the money back, goes on holiday, drinks, drugs, finds his girlfriend cheated on him, and finally discovers the cash down the back of his faulty TV set. It’s more chav soap opera than highbrow theatre.

What made it work then and continue to work now is that Skinner is an urban street poet weaving a completely believable storyline, and it’s delivered almost like musical theatre, albeit without the acting part.

The stage is kept shrouded in shadows (as you can see from our photo gallery, as we were only permitted to shoot the first three songs, and Skinner kept his bulky jacket on throughout that time) and the main man remains quite still and unanimated for the first half of the album, which, to be fair, enhances the theatre-like vibe of this portion of the show.

As organic as the storyline is, so too is the music. Skinner has a real band on stage rather than samples, and they are tight as a constrictor knot: jazzy and breakbeat drums, keys, bass & guitar, as well as two featured vocalists.

A Grand… is the rarest kind of album: one which stands up to being played in full – no dud songs, no filler, every song integral to the plot, every song musically unique and innovative. When his debut album Original Pirate Material and A Grand… were released, they sounded like literally nothing else, as audacious, bold and assured as anything in the rock world, even the swaggering Gallagher brothers and Oasis.

It Was Supposed To Be So Easy opens the show, Skinner swigging from what appeared to be a pint, the self-deprecating humour of the song still largely relevant, even if the need to return DVD’s to the rental shop isn’t.

Blinded By The Light is an epic drug tune; Fit But Don’t You Know It remains the closest he comes to a rock song, and if the sexual politics are a little dicey all these years later nobody seemed to mind, the crowd pogoing to the irrepressible guitar riff and ‘chav on the pull’ tale; Dry Your Eyes (The Streets only UK #1 hit) is a beautiful, painful breakup song which had couples pulling each other a little closer and grown men getting misty-eyed.

After album closer Empty Cans the band take a well-deserved bow and leave the stage for a few minutes before returning for a second set of their more well-known tunes.

There’s a clutch of tracks from Original Pirate Material (including a thoroughly enjoyable Has It Come To This and Let’s Push Things Forward [which is exactly what he did with these two albums], and the hilarious Don’t Mug Yourself), and a smattering from his other albums, Never Went To Church, The Escapist and Who’s Got The Bag notably excellent.

He’s far more animated in the second half, chatty too. If their run through A Grand… was performative theatre, the second set is a rock n’ roll show, and Skinner variously punches the air, clambers on someone’s shoulders in the crowd, and chats away to the audience in between songs.

This being the final show of a triumphant tour, he admits “quite frankly I don’t give a fuck about you tonight – tonight’s all about me!” It’s a refreshingly honest moment for him to be proud of a tour which sold out in almost no time at all and garnered nothing but fantastic reviews.

Later he talks about “agnostic spirituality” after noting that “when I left for Australia I did not know we’d be fighting in World War III – and on the bad side.” At another point he encourages people to go crazy with almost Ozzy Osbourne intensity. In another moment he’s declaring “You know how people say happy wife happy life? Well I say happy band – peace across the land.”

It’s all endearing and fun, not to mention musically spot on, but however much a purveyor of urban poetry and streetwise grime literature he is, he can’t deny his chavness completely, and ends with a fond farewell:

“Thank you so much for coming out. I’m very sorry but now I’m going to go and do some drugs.”

Note: unfortunately due to factors beyond our control we missed opening band Shady Nasty, but our esteemed photographer captured them in all their glory.

Setlist:
It Was Supposed to Be So Easy
Could Well Be In
Not Addicted
Blinded by the Lights
Wouldn’t Have It Any Other Way
Get Out of My House
Fit but You Know It
Such a Twat
What Is He Thinking?
Dry Your Eyes
Empty Cans

Turn the Page
Who’s Got the Bag
Let’s Push Things Forward
Don’t Mug Yourself
Never Went to Church
Utopia
The Escapist
Has It Come to This?
Weak Become Heroes
Too Much Brandy
Take Me as I Am
It Was Supposed to Be So Easy

Category: Live Reviews, Photo Galleries