Live Review: Stratosfunk

If you missed Muscle Shoals, the best music documentary in the past decade, then go to a Stratosfunk gig and at least the soundtrack will be covered. Muscle Shoals was about how one tiny town in Alabama produced some of the greatest Soul music of all time. The jaw-dropping revelation of the documentary was that although some of the greatest black soul singers of the '60s and '70s were easily recognisable, no one knew that the backing musicians were, in fact, predominantly white.

Fast-forward to Perth 2014, and similar to the FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, a salubrious and gifted black lead singer, Yara Neto, leads a band of mainly white guys and two harmonious back-up vocalists, Amy Rosato and Jessie Gordon, in some beautifully and originally arranged soul masterpieces. The reason ethnicity is mentioned is because FAME Studios managed to break down race relations in that volatile era. Fifty years later we see all that is good about Australia's talent and multiculturalism in this one band.

Five of the nine band members also play in the swing band, The Cottontail Trio & The Supper Club. These guys know each other like the back of their collective hands; thus the showmanship and fluid playlist is as seamless as any international act you will ever see. The band oozes talent and their high energy choreography and onstage presence had the venue rocking as if the audience was actually transported to the American South in the '60s.

Highlights were Aretha Franklin's Respect, with an amazing guitar solo by Jon Matthews, which nearly brought the house down, the classic Shake A Tail Feather and Ike & Tina Turner's mega-hit, River Deep Mountain High, which had enough energy to light up a small town.

Combined with the most gorgeous harmonies you're likely to hear anywhere, funky rhythm and horn sections that will blow your mind, Stratosfunk is one of the best kept live musical secrets in Perth.