Review: Hidden Treasures at North Fremantle Bowls Club

Hidden Treasures at North Fremantle Bowls Club
w/ Navisha, Oakabella & The Maeflies, Brides of Science, Coco Elise, Symmetrical Dogs, PERSIA, Grey Goo, DETH
Thursday, June 11, 2026

On a rainy winter night, staying warm inside would have been the sensible option. But everything seems to be coming up Fremantle lately: the Dockers are strangely unimpeachable; Arrival has made a strong case for itself as a serious new fixture in the arts calendar, and with Hidden Treasures and Freo Winter Festival arriving in quick succession, the city feels deep in one of its periodic spells of self-renewal. The lure of an event like Hidden Treasures—hyperlocal, low-stakes and promising the strange pleasure of seeing familiar spaces reanimated—was hard to pass up. It’s great to see community spaces being used in this way, bringing music not just to venues but to the places we already share.

And North Freo Bowlo made a fine case for itself. Firepits burned outside. BBQ’d onions wafted in from the sausage sizzle. The Social Farm DJ stage sat under a patio by the community garden, where wet soil, vegetables and campfire smoke mingled in the night air. What community rooms like this might lose in audio fidelity, they gain in proximity: artists close enough to read, people sitting on the floor, familiar faces recognising one another across the room. Gone, too, were the hellish bottlenecks of some earlier Hidden Treasures configurations. This North Freo night felt less like a festival precinct than a neighbourhood temporarily made strange.

Opening proceedings in the main Bowlo room, Navisha brought a huge soul voice to an early crowd still finding its feet. A new track, Ain’t No Problem, featured a delicious slice of keys, while later ballads tested the bounds of her instrument. There was plenty of promise here, though the band still felt like it was developing around her voice rather than fully matching its power.

Over in the Community Hall, Oakabella & The Maeflies had more guts than the experimental folk tag might suggest. With two guitars, bass, violin and drums, their ragtag, op-shop-chic energy tilted as much towards indie rock as folk. An unnerving violin stroke opened one song before giving way to warm, ornamental guitar. Elsewhere, wistful melodies and a sweetly sentimental speech about making life up as you go along captured the night’s broader community spirit.

The first real ignition point, though, came from Brides of Science. With some more seasoned ingredients than some of the night’s younger acts, they announced themselves with a stripped-back drum kit smashed into life from the top. With synths, keys and declarative female vocals sitting somewhere in the Siouxsie Sioux lineage, they offered a revivalist but genuinely engaging take on post-punk synth drama. Smoke and magenta light helped sell the atmosphere, while the closing number’s alternating dual masc/femme vocals suggested a call-and-response dynamic that could be used even more. Here, the night suddenly felt switched on.

Back in the Community Hall, Coco Elise kept things lighter but no less charming. The five-piece—with sax, trumpet, keys, guitar, bass and drums—dealt in relaxed, jazz-tinged pop that was music-nerdy without tipping into overearnest bombast. Muted trumpet accents and sax lines gave the songs shape, while patches of falsetto and reverb softened everything into an easy glow. A brief detour outside to E-V’s DJ set, with Afrobeats and calypso flavours in the open air, worked like an auditory amuse-bouche after the stuffier rooms.

If Brides of Science were the night’s first spark, Symmetrical Dogs were its weird, unruly centrepiece. A three-piece of drums, acoustic guitar and vocals, they moved between near-whisper, discordant screech, yelp and growl with freak-folk conviction. The songs flickered between impulses without losing their internal logic: part ADHD whimsy, part spoken-word grunge, part theatrical non sequitur. The vocalist wandered through the crowd with the mic lead, eliciting low, strange sounds, before veering into harder screams back onstage. By the time Project Pig arrived, the line “I am your little project pig” landed with a mix of disdain, acceptance and wild performance pleasure. They were eccentric, funny and genuinely compelling.

PERSIA then transformed the Community Hall again, aided by a smoke-filled room and a solid backing of drums and keys. Her contemporary R&B was far more effective live than mere “bedroom” smoothness might imply; she commanded the space with ease, her vocal runs filling the hall without overworking it. Speaking warmly on gratitude and identity, she gave the room a polished, atmospheric centre of gravity before the night’s heavier turn.

On the main stage, Grey Goo brought Perth pedigree and seasoned rock’n’roll assurance. Frontman Doug May, resplendent in a silky cowboy shirt with red fringing, leant into blues-inflected grunge and well-balanced fuzz. There was something nostalgia-heavy here despite the project’s relative newness, but not in a way that felt trend-bound. Their best moments came when the volume lifted and buried wails folded into artful noise, the set threatening to unravel into drums and pedal-twiddling before kicking back into a solid rock-out.

Finally, DETH pushed the night to its heaviest edge. By then, the Community Hall was so smoke-filled you could barely see a thing, which felt entirely appropriate. Opening with the threatening pulse of Bleed, Hayley Beth and co. sounded intoxicatingly loud, the room’s acoustics refracting drum strikes, piercing yells and clashing guitars into something almost physical. It would be a mistake to write them off as mere noise merchants: beneath the volume was nuance, control and one of the more exciting heavy bands currently moving through Perth’s underground. Hayley’s wails, growls and dark laughter carried the set towards a release that was all but exorcism.

By the end, Hidden Treasures had done what it promises on the tin. It did not simply uncover bands; it revealed what happens when familiar rooms are allowed to behave differently. The Bowlo remained a Bowlo—onions, wet earth, fire pits and all—but for one winter night it also became a living map of a scene mutating in public.

CAT LANDRO

Photos by Adrian Thomson