One Direction wows Perth with magnetic, intimate concert I may have sustained some hearing loss after being surrounded by screaming girls at the Perth leg of the One Direction tour last night. The second stop of the Australian Take Me Home tour went off with a bang for the biggest boy band in the world - with the exception of Louis Tomlinson, who began by announcing he'd lost his voice. It hasn't been a great start for the lad, who face-planted on stage during the first show of the tour in Adelaide on Monday. Sipping tea throughout the night, Louis was helped out up by the other boys who picked up the melody as he struggled through his lyrics. That aside, the boys certainly eliminated any doubts about their vocal abilities. They sailed through each song sans-miming with a particularly impressive performance from Liam Payne and some stunning falsetto work, care of Zayn Malik. The show opened with the tracks Up All Night, I Would, Heart Attack, More Than This and Loved You First - to which every crowd member seemed to know every word. On a fandom scale of one to 10 - one being "I can't name any band members" and 10 being "I bought a lock of Harry's hair on EBay and used it to make a love potion that I drank to make him marry me" -I would have rated myself about a five. I don't own an album, but I do think they're incredibly charming and it's possible that I may have bought one of their T-shirts once. Although after watching my first One Direction concert, I believe I've gone up a notch on the fan scale. Part of the appeal is the band's magnetic banter on stage. It feels as if the boys are just hanging out in their lounge room, having a chat, and you're a part of it. Granted a conversation with 15,000 screaming tween girls would be unusual for most, but not for these boys. Perth certainly delivered the predicted hysteria of shrieking fans on their tip-toes, home-made glitter covered signs in hand, waving desperately at Harry Styles every time he glanced in their direction, just hoping he would notice them. You can just imagine the response when he busted out the line, "I want to kiss every one of you." Much to my horror, the decibels increased even further when the boys encouraged Perth fans to try and be "louder than Adelaide" were. We ended up louder, of course, and the boys were also impressed with our arena. Niall Horan calling Perth Arena "absolutely incredible," also remarking "it's very blue in here." Having previously only sat stadium side for concerts at Perth Arena, this was my first time in floor seats. The sound quality from stadium seating is a significant step up from the woeful Burswood Dome (may it rest in peace). But from the ground front and centre, things weren't quite as impressive. With most band sound coming from the stage amps, the vocal mix wasn't so easily audible. The show rolled on with hit single One Thing, followed by C'mon C'mon. Change My Mind saw the boys mount a floating platform that transported them overhead across the crowd to another smaller stage in the centre of the auditorium. From there, the band smashed out a cover medley of One Way Or Another and Teenage Kicks before launching into answering some crowd questions via Twitter. "What do you wash first in the shower?" asked one fan. Thankfully, Niall listed his knee-caps. Riding back across the crowd and on to the main stage, the band delivered Moment, Live While We're Young, Summer Love, Over Again, Little Things and a rendition of Wheatus' Teenage Dirtbag that saw the crowd offer their first hand-in-the-air salute to the rock gods. With Niall on guitar, the band continued with Rock Me, She's Not Afraid and Kiss You before the boys said farewell and disappeared below the stage. What ensued was perhaps the loudest request for an encore that I have ever witnessed. And after what seemed a very long five minutes, One Direction returned to the stage to deliver Best Song Ever, and finally, perhaps their best known single What Makes You Beautiful. It was an entirely delightful family concert with great live vocals and a lot of good, clean fun. Credit to the crowd also, there was not a catfight or a single hair-pulling incident to be spoken of. And may I say, Niall pulls off the best Aussie accent I've ever heard on a foreigner. Bravo 1D.