LIVE: MIDGE URE & COLE STACEY – Perth | Boorloo, 8 Oct 2026

LIVE: MIDGE URE & COLE STACEY – Perth | Boorloo, 8 Oct 2026
The Astor Theatre, Mount Lawley, Perth, Western Australia
Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar
Photography by Pete Gardner

Ahhh, the Eighties. Punk had tossed a grenade into the music business and in it’s anarchic wake synthesisers were everyone’s new best friend – and don’t some of those hits now sound instantly carbon dated with their cheesy synth and drum machine sounds. The thing that separates a cheesy track from a great one – long-outdated ‘state of the art’ 8-bit tech sounds or not – is the songwriting, and Midge Ure’s songbook is impressive indeed. Through Ultravox and his solo work he’s multiple modest classics which may even have slipped your mind as they had mine, a fact that he relays in one telling exchange mid-show.

One ‘wag’ on social media apparently commented on his ‘Cataloguing The Hits’ tour event page, “What – is he going to be playing his one hit, then?”, to which Ure summoned all the eloquence he could muster to reply succinctly, “wanker.”

He’s right to be affronted: tonight’s show includes Ultravox classics Vienna, Reap The Wild Wind and Dancing With Tears In My Eyes, as well as a clutch of others; solo hits Dear God, Call Of The Wild, Monster and the unbeatable If I Was; a couple of his Visage numbers including yet another classic in Fade To Grey; his wonderful cover of Tom Rush’s No Regrets; and even the Phil Lynott solo track he co-wrote, Yellow Pearl (which was used as the Top Of The Pops theme tune for several years in the mid-80’s).

Any wanker can see that’s more than one hit.

Earlier, opener Cole Stacey delivered a set of intriguing and enthralling folk-adjacent songs armed only with a mandolin, his powerful and heartfelt vocals, and a warm and engaging manner. Taken from his debut solo album, recorded in exotic and historic locations such as ancient ruins and inside a church, the short set gets the crowd on side immediately – helped by singalongs and clapalongs and Stacey’s humble and truly appreciative, friendly banter. An evocative cover of Eugene Raskin’s folk standard Those Were The Days sounds like the perfect soundtrack to break plates to in a Greek restaurant, and Stacey’s acapella Hard Times Come Again No More is powerful as hell. No doubt he deservedly sold a few CDs after the show.

Cole is also in Ure’s Band Electronica, bouncing enthusiastically as he plays bass, grinning like The Cheshire Cat as he plays keyboards, and contributing crystal backing vocals as if he hadn’t already done enough. Skinny tie wearing drummer Russell Field is similarly all smiles, hitting hard, while synth maestro and occasional violin player Joseph O’Keefe is more sedate but no less essential to the mix.

This show has been a long time coming. Perth was to be the final gig of Ure’s 2020 tour, and they actually arrived in town just as the very first COVID lockdowns caused the shutters to come crashing down on everyone’s social life. That show never happened – indeed, the band spent a nervous 24 hours at the airport unsure they would even be able to get back home at all. When their next tour was announced Perth fans were again disappointed as Ure had a health crisis to attend to, meaning the entire tour – they were to play Perth exactly one year ago tomorrow – was rescheduled to allow him time to recuperate.

He appears fighting fit (and impossibly thin) in black pants, a black polo neck skivvy and sporting a black guitar when he takes the stage for the hyper-earnest Dear God, and it’s that guitar which packs some punch tonight. The cheesy synths and drum machine sounds are intact for Fade To Grey and Vienna – a moody and enigmatic cinematic masterpiece of a song – but elsewhere the guitar takes more prominence, his muscular playing beefing up most of the songs, his solos searing, while the synths sound more contemporary than cheesy.

It shouldn’t be a surprise, really: after all, Ure joined Thin Lizzy for a US tour when Gary Moore walked out, sticking with them for a year or so until Snowy White took over six string duties, and they are two impressive players to be sandwiched between.

Midge (fun fact: Jim backwards) is amiable as he chats to the crowd, apologises for the delay in returning here (“we made sure you were the first show of the tour this time”), encourages the crowd to get on their feet and dance, which the majority do with glee, and revels in rocking along to the peak-Eighties-ness of his impressive back catalogue.

Set List: Midge Ure

Dear God
Again We Love (Visage song)
Call of the Wild
Passing Strangers (Ultravox song)
If I Was
I Remember (Death in the Afternoon) (Ultravox song)
Your Name (Has Slipped My Mind Again) (Ultravox song)
Astradyne (Ultravox song)
No Regrets (Tom Rush cover)
New Europeans (Ultravox song)
All Stood Still (Ultravox song)
Monster
Vienna (Ultravox song)
Reap the Wild Wind (Ultravox song)
The Voice (Ultravox song)
Fade to Grey (Visage song)
Dancing With Tears in My Eyes (Ultravox song)

Yellow Pearl (Phil Lynott cover)
Hymn (Ultravox song)

Set List: Cole Stacey

Feast Or Fire
Song Of The Moor
Those Were The Days
Hard Times Come Again No More
We’ll Find Our Way
Island Song

 

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