Gig Review: Princess Chelsea @ Meow Nui, Wellington – 26/07/2025

Limahl’s version of The Neverending Story is playing over the dance floor as I enter Princess Chelsea’s Midwinter Ball at Meow Nui. This take on the song will be the first of three versions – progressively increasing in intensity – played during an appropriately epic, 1980’s fantasy-themed evening.

The venue looks incredible – decorative ambience joining the efforts of the audience to establish layers of magic and wrap us in nostalgia. There are photo op stations where one can harness their inner Atreyu – in a valiant attempt to pull Artax out of the Swamps of Sadness – and have a cuddle with Falkor the Luck Dragon. The Childlike Empress walks among a spectacularly costumed crowd.

While Bard Rock Cafe provide roaming troubadour vibes of a medieval flavour, and the floor begins to fill, Jareth the Goblin King dances with a ball-gowned Sarah Williams, from Labyrinth. An abundance of foliage sprouts from heads and many horns. So too do crowns, wigs, and the odd bird beak.

MC Tom Sainsbury’s first costume of the night is Rock Biter, from The Neverending Story. He pops his bulky head off to greet us all. He singles out The Nothing as his most terrifying association with the 1984 film he has stepped out of. It inspired his childhood self to write a story he reads us the last page of, recounting how The Nothing took away his pets, his family, and himself, until “there was nothing at all”. He’s clearly not over it, so this gig must be triggering.

Luke Buda takes the stage in an enormous ram skull helmet, leather and studs. The horns come and go because – as Grecco Romank’s Mikey Sperring will later find – it isn’t easy to sing/hear/wear an ear monitor with them on. Buda’s vibes make me think about Father John Misty, perhaps riding Sparklehorse, across some distant, breezy highland. Shimmeringly beautiful, but emotionally capable of cracking you in two. He occasionally uses a vocoder effect, belying the tremulous sweetness of his natural voice.

Folk dancing breaks out in the audience during Candy. Other tracks from Buda include Brain Jail, My Naked Body, and Here Comes The Wind. The latter employs an electrified Bob Dylan vibe, going next level when the vocals morph into a sweet siren wail – mesmerising. A cover of Clannad’s Robin (The Hooded Man) delights, especially when a mysterious white owl dancer manifests on stage – an “as seen on TV throwback” to the mid-1980’s TV series Robin of Sherwood, for which this song was the theme. Plenty of people here look like they just stepped right out of its video.

Buda’s most recent single, Very Special Feelings – with shiny keyboards and a groovy bass bottom – is a treat. He closes introducing “a cover about dreaming a dream”, before delivering a majestic (second version of) The Neverending Story. It features an epic guitar solo from Luke, and the audience are right on board, swinging and singing.

Between bands, I take in some more of the venue ambience. People are lining up to pull Excalibur from the stone, and Tom Sainsbury strolls through the highly bewigged and crowned crowd in his alternate look for the night, a Friar Tuck get-up. The effect is deliciously disorienting, like ye olde village marketplace, replete with jester… and an impressively angular light system.

Tāmaki Makaurau industrial EBM techno trio Grecco Romank are up next. Damian Golfinopoulus applies his chainmail to wicked synths and samples. Billee Fees whirls in a white gown, her ethereal vocals diabolically wedded to Mikey Sperring’s, which seem channeled from Satan’s lair. Sperring’s another one who grapples with a huge horned helmet interfering with his earpiece, but it doesn’t stop him raising absolute mayhem. Princess Chelsea and Tom Sainsbury watch from side stage as 2 Hot 2 Hunt whips the crowd into a frenzy. The roped off space in front of the stage turns into a sword fighting arena, after which Sperring urges the crowd to surge into the space. He jumps in for a crowd surf at one point, before encouraging everyone to back up again, before things get too “ultraviolent”. There’ll be more sword fighting on stage, and Sperring will also employ his weapon as a drumstick, during a literally banging take on The Pet Shop Boys’ It’s A Sin.

There’s a lot of interband crosspollination tonight – with guitarist Joshua Worthington-Church (surely raised by wolves) playing with Grecco Romank before his turn with Dream Warriors. Luke Buda will also return to the stage to join Princess Chelsea for Time. When Grecco Romank express their sadness that Princess Chelsea can’t join them for her part of Don’t Get Caught, it’s the first sign that something’s amiss with the star of the night.

Princess Chelsea and the Dream Warriors cast a deep spell, coming on with a booming Everything Is Going To Be Alright. Chelsea is hitting the fluids and throat spray from go, and very quickly tells the audience, “My health is suffering tonight so I don’t know if I’ll be able to sing.” Her voice is a ragged whisper. Guitarist Jasmine Balmer (aka Being.) tells us our Princess actually has strep throat, is on antibiotics, and has not even been speaking. With any other band, this could be disastrous, but Princess Chelsea and the Dream Warriors are not any other band.

Although it’s a continually fluid situation, I count eight people on stage to begin with, everybody hardout earning their space in this beguilingly layered noise orchestra. They variously employ multiple voices, harp, tubular bells, xylophone, tambourines, keyboards and drums to intricately textured effects. On guitars, massive props are due to the incredibly rock and roll Balmer – such a sight, savaging her guitar in a baby blue, satin formal gown; absolutely wild Worthington-Church; and imposingly shrouded Simeon Kavanagh-Vincent. The latter tore himself a great showcase in The Forest.

Chelsea’s sister Olivia takes the stage to lend vocals to Wasting Time, from 2018’s The Loneliest Girl. Longtime Princess Chelsea collaborator Jonathan Bree – characteristically, if fearsomely, incognito and not named (although Princess Chelsea did drop several hard hints) – provided one of many cover-based highlights, and a topical one too. Dressed as The Beast, (from Beauty and The Beast), but looking not dissimilar to the actual beast (aka Lord of Darkness), he joined the band for a terrifying cover of Black Sabbath’s Black Sabbath. It served as a powerful tribute to Ozzy Osbourne, only days after his passing; and provided a live music highlight I won’t forget the chills from in a hurry. Something about his stance and vocal has lodged deeply inside me.

There are at least 11 people sharing the stage for the encore finale of 1988 Enya single Orinoco Flow. Billee Fees and Vera Ellen are up there. The combined effect of this enormous chorus – not to mention the musical gymnastics weaving around it – has everyone’s jaws dropping. Princess Chelsea is like a magnet, and there is a place for every stripe of weirdo in her ambitious visions. We are well set to “sail away, sail away, sail away”, on a bed of harp, into shimmering memories of a magnificent evening… but not before a few more spins on the dancefloor to some unearthed 1980’s pop classics.

Photo Credit: Nina fon McMillin for Muzic.NZ
Princess Chelsea Photo Gallery
Grecco Romank Photo Gallery
Luke Buda Photo Gallery