Review: Mental as Anything at Astor Theatre

Mental as Anything at Astor Theatre
w/ Lou Bradley
Saturday, June 13, 2026

Australian rock royalty Mental as Anything arrived at the Astor on Saturday night to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the band’s founding with their Perth fans. Featuring two of the group’s original members in brothers Peter O’Doherty and Reg Mombassa, the evening was a warm and generous journey back to the glory days, with more than a few tracks well beyond the hits cut deep from within their catalogue.

The hitherto unannounced support slot was taken by Lou Bradley. This ARIA-nominated artist brought a gentle style of Tasmanian bluegrass to the theatre, joined on stage by husband Phil on banjo, mandolin, and backing vocals. Bradley’s delicate acoustic arrangements and heartfelt lyrics within her music were paired with a raucous sense of humour between songs, an alchemy that quickly warmed the audience to her overall set.

The self-described “hillbilly pop” Bradley brought forward may have seemed an eclectic choice to bring on tour with her more rock-inclined headliners, but it most definitely entertained as a delightful entrée to the main event.

Beginning their performance with Come Around, followed by Too Many Times, Mental as Anything effortlessly took the fans back four and a half decades to the heights of local New Wave, as O’Doherty stated that, even with all those years of practice, the opening bars of some songs were still negotiated between the band in the moment.

Egypt, from 1979, was introduced by Mombassa with a joke that suggested Perth’s time zone aligned to that of the pharaohs, many millennia behind Sydney, which oddly aroused an audible response from someone in the crowd, seemingly overprotective of Western Australia’s reputation.

The rest of the audience sat forward in their seats and found their full voice for If You Leave Me, Can I Come Too, which also gained the greatest applause of all tracks to that point. Mombassa then shared his skills at clairvoyancy, having written Troop Movements in the Ukraine in 1980—a Cold War song related originally to Vietnam and Afghanistan that has become all too relevant again since 2014. O’Doherty joked that they would set up a tarot card booth at the merch desk for further Mombassa predictions.

Emotional connection was most completely sparked between stage and audience with the ballad The World Seems Difficult. In O’Doherty’s introduction of the track, he mentioned former bandmate and songwriter Greedy Smith, who had been the last man standing of the original Mentals line-up before his death in 2019, a loss still felt as sharply across the entire theatre as if it were yesterday.

Mombassa and O’Doherty, having both originally departed the group in 2000 and thinking they would never come back, reappraised those decisions after Greedy’s passing. The inexorable gravitational pull to resurrect the band had won out, and it was the audience’s absolute privilege tonight that they had done so.

Having appeared quite taciturn between songs so far this evening, the memories and stories now poured out almost unbidden, like a tap the brothers could not turn off. Recollection was made of Mombassa and Martin Plaza having started it all on Sydney’s northern beaches, with so many gigs at community halls played those early months and years, well before they even had a confirmed band name.

Though no one could ever replace Greedy, Plaza, or original drummer Dave Twohill—the latter two still with us but unable to take part in this tour—new frontman Simon Rudston-Brown gave a very strong performance, his voice both sweet as honey and light as a sunbeam when singing the classics.

Across rockabilly-adjacent and all-round fun-time Looking for Bird, all members of the band were given extended solos that also allowed keyboardist Shannon Stitt and drummer Declan O’Doherty—Peter’s son—to come out of the metaphorical shadows from their allotted portions of the stage.

From classic rock covers they had made their own, to jaunty originals about surfing, girls, or self-confidence, and even through to shades of metal on their Christmas song that had somehow intersected with the nuclear apocalypse, the Mentals proved this evening they had always contained quite the extensive range within their repertoire.

All the above being said, when Mombassa announced to the crowd late in the piece, “You may know this one,” everyone knew what was to come: their international smash and unofficial Glasgow Rangers theme song, Live It Up. The audience was well in voice again for the track, and many leapt from their seats to dance in the aisles.

Then, just as the crowd energy had finally risen to this level, the band departed the stage, having performed the big hit. The fans remained on their feet, awaiting any possible encore. There was one of the Mentals’ major pieces that had not yet been played, and the surprisingly charming chant of “We want nips” reverberated around the venue.

Indeed, it was The Nips Are Getting Bigger that returned the group to the crowd after a few minutes offstage—the title in reference to alcoholic spirits served during a booze-soaked misadventure, rather than the obvious yet slightly confusing double entendre it almost equally could have been. The encore swiftly took on the relaxed cadence of a pub gig, the audience on their feet, comfortable and slightly too loud, cheering as O’Doherty suggested the bar remain open beyond official closing, whilst the rest of the band all but directly asked the crowd for song requests.

The night concluded with a thoroughly enjoyable version of Rock and Roll Music, which was rather the cherry on top of an evening that had brought many of the hits early, yet had only continued to heighten the energy towards the end. It was a show that left the fans wishing for more but also reminded them to savour what had been given, both tonight and across the last five decades.

PAUL MEEK

Photos by Linda Dunjey