Festival Review: Great Sounds Great Part 2 @ Cuba Street Precinct, Wellington – 5/09/2026

While it’s indulgently maddening to think of all the different combinations of Great Sounds Great itineraries one could have built on Saturday night, mine begins sitting in the front row waiting for Vera Ellen (pictured above) at Flying Nun Records. She greets a full house with “a song of great social and political import”, Mercedes Benz, a cappella, complete with hand claps. It’s a great scene setter, on a night where – while politics are never far from the agenda – art prevails every time. The audience are up for Ellen’s Janis Joplin tribute, seamlessly joining in to sing the second round – it’s the first of a lot of singing along I will witness tonight. Community is like that. 

Ellen explains that – due to a family circumstance which made her question whether she should play today – she has decided to do a little of whatever she wants this afternoon. A hard lesson has reinforced her belief that: “Music is life… Do what you love.” It makes a great slogan for the day, and opens the door for two hitherto unreleased covers, the second of which is Jonathan Richman’s That Summer Feeling. She also treats us to Part X from her 2024 Heartbreak for Jetlag EP, and a few cuts from her recent Heaven Knows What Time album, including Walking in Vegas and When It’s Over. For the latter, Ellen’s producer Ben Lemi steps in to take the vocals Hemi Hemingway provides on the record. Another backing vocalist sings along off mic.

“That song’s real hard without a band,” she notes. 

Ellen plays the only instrument present – a taped together blue fender stratocaster, sporting a War Profiteers Out Of Music sticker (reminding one of the principled stand she took pulling out of the South by Southwest SXSW Festival in 2024). Nevertheless, those present nail this heartbreaker to provide a set highlight. 

We almost get Big Shot Jr – actually, get as far as “I awoke from a dream where the serpent bit my face” – but Ellen hits a psychic wall, does the honest thing, and calls time at the 30-minute mark. It is a privilege to have been in the presence of a very human artist, who knows when enough’s enough for her, and says so. I appreciate the example.

Flying Nun Records’ second act are the incomparable Menzies – a band who really know how to make the most of a tiny space. With four band members on the non-existent stage (it is a working record store, after all), a trombonist and violin player arranged on the stairs to the mezzanine, and front man Chris Brown leaping the balustrade any time he needs to play keyboards, things are very busy up there. Dressed in co-ordinated red and black, and playing to a keen-as crowd who are singing every word right back to them (will, in fact, poignantly sing the last words of the set), Menzies get the crowd jumping right off the mark with Ashram. They proceed to immediately dial up the tempo with a bangin’ take on Suzy Cato. Both songs are from their recently released and thoroughly excellent Holding My Cold Hand, Even Though Yours is Warm – an album as Kiwi as chips ‘n’ dip. 

The title track of 2024’s Spaghetti Land EP follows, singer Chris Brown smacking on the wall for percussion at one point. The fun is undeniable, and he takes a moment to acknowledge Te Whanganui-a-Tara, saying: “I love that this city embraces big, silly things like [Great Sounds Great].”

Mash Potato sees him explode into the audience for the first time. The sometimes-magician follows these high jinks with the neat trick of turning an orange scarf into a long steel stick, which he uses to point into the audience during the spoken word album cut All Black. It’s poetry of the muddiest kind, and still the audience match the lyrics, word for word.

Red balloons are distributed to be blown up, and the audience warned to hold onto them until the time is right, assured we will know when that time is. When the band break into Superman Pose, it really is clear that they should be lofted. 

“When does life get bigger than this?,” indeed – I haven’t had this much fun since my fifth birthday party. 

Crouching is next, and Brown parts the audience like the Red Sea, to rock out on guitar in the middle of it. It’s not all fun and games though, because the emotional minefield of Triptych comes next, wringing both Brown and the audience out. It’s an astonishingly brave, epic performance, one for the ages. 

But Menzies won’t leave us crying – and last song ‘Appy shines nostalgia bright as unfiltered sunshine on your childhood kitchen lino all over the gathered, singing, beaming mass. 

Like the song says, “I won’t forget this quickly…” but I am wondering how I’m gonna top Menzies tonight. 

Over at Meow Nui, Office Dog have driven a van down from Tāmaki Makarau, and declare themselves “really delirious” to be here. I am expecting a three-piece, but there are five of them on stage… extra percussion of all kinds, and more guitar too. All the better to lay the lusciously intricate foundations they’ll melodically channel their Ōtepoti roots through. 

They suggest they’ll play a bunch of songs off their new record Prime Corner – warming up with its excellent first track Front Row Seat, following with Slowing to a Walk. They have a bit more than that up their sleeve though. Luckily too, because it’s clear there are fans of their 2024 Doggerland EP, and 2023 album Spiel in the house. 

Dump No Waste, Flows to the Sea from the former sees singer Kane Strang swapping his electric guitar for an acoustic, starting out gently, before wrapping us in dark swirl of the titular lyric. It was great to hear Permanent Day, and a super choppy Reins gets a huge cheer. They closed with Prime Corner‘s title track… 

‘They’re waving, but I don’t want to leave,’ couldn’t be more appropriate. So, I don’t, because Bic Runga is playing here next. 

A large Red Sunset eye oversees the assembling of Runga and band – including life/music partner/producer Kody Nielson on drums, Carl Bennett on keyboards, and, longtime bandmate Cass Basil on bass/synths/backing vocals. 

I saw Basil playing at sister venue Meow with Delaney Davidson a few months ago, and always enjoy all this massively talented musician brings to the many endeavours she graces. She, Runga, and Nielson will appear under Nielson’s Silicon moniker later in the night. Gotta love the connections made in the richly woven web of our national music scene. 

As for Runga, I saw her first gig at Squid in 1995, when she shyly won over the audience on a bill full of boys, showing the other bands a new way to do things into the bargain. Nearly a quarter century later, I saw her headline the Newtown Festival, in 2019, filling the streets surrounding the South stage on a blazing March day. It’s just beautiful to see her really owning her power these days, with such an impressive repertoire to draw from, and plenty of fresh gas in the tank. 

The band are super-tight – real benchmark stuff – and the crowd are in massive sing-along form. Many of these songs hold the status of anthems. There’s a welcome, retro disco vibe to new tracks that feel like they want to party, very late. Runga shares that Ghost in Your Bed “is about freaking yourself out on the internet all night”, but its carnivalesque tones take us to a far earlier era altogether. Red Sunset turns up the funk. Techno track Paris in the Rain translates well in a live context. Hey Little One is just flat-out stirring, and Runga refers (not for the only time) to the pull motherhood exerts on her. 

Outside of new material, in a luxuriously stuffed set, we get Listening for the Weather, Get Some Sleep, Precious Things, Dream of a Dream, and Election Night. Birds is an atmospheric highlight, and Something Good really lifts the crowd. She saves the best for last, delivering an achingly beautiful Drive, and a truly gorgeous Sway. Incredible to realise they are the first two songs off her first album, Drive, back in 1997. Her legacy is now influencing a third generation; and yet, how is it she never looks any different – always luminous.

What better way to follow such opulent feels, than with a trip to Valhalla? A trip that turns out to be as fittingly legendary as the idea suggests. I head out, in search of mighty things, and am not disappointed by my fourth Flying Nun band of the night. 

Soft Bait is a post-punk four-piece band from Tāmaki Makaurau. Band members are Joshua Hunter on vocals and guitar, Patrick Hickley on guitar, Keria Paterson on bass, and Cameron Mackintosh on drums. Their albums are Plot Points (2022), and last year’s Life Advice, and I am super-excited to hear anything from either. They give me a kind of early Headless Chickens vibe I respect feeling from the subsequent generation – something old, something new.

Speaking of respect, Hunter gives props to Valhalla – bar and destination of legend, symbiotic – in a series of demonic incantations bracketing a show that’s anything but novelty. Beneath the bar’s literal skeleton’s hand, Soft Bait tear straight into the first track off Life Advice, Highly Recommended, followed by its angry mate Long Line, and the deceptively comic TNT. 

One new song, called Heavy Metal, is perfectly suited to its surrounds, rippling my clothes with real menace; another, Spinning Flowers, has an almost psychedelic groove. It’s impressive, how well the unknown material stands up next to the known, how instantly punk rock classic it feels. A command to “get feral in the crowd, please” is easy to heed when Soft Bait dish out a song like What I Mean. 

Sooner, Neighbourhood, Talk Too Much (from Life Advice) bracket 2024 single No Bad Days. Big from Plot Points holds its own – no small task – in the exhaust of a rip through New Leaf so forceful, the venue threatens to sprout chicken legs and run off like Baba Yaga’s house. Gobsmacking. 

Heading home from Great Sounds Great, I remember something Vera Ellen said to Rolling Stone earlier this year, when asked one thing she would change about the ANZ music industry. 

“I think we ought to celebrate each other more. Make the local bands the rockstars instead of big-shot stadium bands swooping in for a night. Recognise the talent in our backyard.”

This is exactly what Eyegum, Great Sounds Great, all the associated venues, the staff and volunteers that make it work, and the wonderful audiences are doing. As Bic Runga said from the stage at Meow Nui: 

“Keep up the good work, Wellington.”

Gallery 1 – Photo Credit: Tim Gruar
Gallery 2 – Photo Credit: Scott Burnett