By Xavier Farrow-Francis
@isthisxephyr
On the night of Wellington’s Great Sounds Great festival, it is typically windy and rainy. My hair is blowing everywhere, it starts to drizzle, and I haven’t even made it to Cuba Street yet: how suitable! Now I’m hardly a live music aficionado, but upon seeing the lineup for GSG 2024 – the multi-venue festival organised by Eyegum Collective that capped off August – I was eager due to the bountiful selection of artists on offer throughout the night. Even just on the basis of the images used to promote each act, it was clear how distinctive every one was from the other. As someone who’s always been drawn to more off-kilter outfits, what became the most important thing to me was devoting as much time to the more experimental + femme artists of the schedule as I possibly could.
The first set of the night took me to Rogue & Vagabond. The permeating smell of chargrill had a homely and familiar aroma which immediately made me feel welcome, setting the perfect precedent for the night. As I wait for rapper Kenzie from Welly’s set to begin, someone who I can only assume as a GSG stage manager walks up to her and asks if she’s about to start, to which she responds with the loveliest and most chill “Yeah bro” I’ve maybe ever heard. Taking inspiration from one of her favorite working rappers, Leikeli47, Kenzie’s lyrics and flow are soulful, and her beats routinely stomping. She played a self-described “lolly scramble”, performing roughly 20 tracks in 45 minutes and consistently keeping the audience’s energy flowing. Sometime near the beginning of her set, Kenzie highlighted how honored she was to be back in her hometown, and how important her presence at GSG was as one of only two female MCs on the lineup – more on the other one later… Kenzie from Welly was a truly warm and expressive start to the festival.
Arriving at staple Pōneke venue San Fran, there were many heads awaiting Death and the Maiden. Their Uneven Ground album this year was a fresh addition to Aotearoa’s rock catalog, injecting a seductive helping of industrial and ethereal qualities into the genre.
Opening with heavy noise, Hope Robertson’s screeching guitar is akin to a desperate banshee pleading to be taken in. Vocalist and bassist Lucinda King’s thousand-yard stare frames her as a softspoken beast, and providing the backbone for it all are Danny Brady’s mechanical beats. The band’s music phases through the crowd like restless dreams – compounding, everything comes together. Through sweeping lowend that growls and rumbles, or piercing highend that shatters the atmosphere, they know how to make a phenomenal build. Their songs always reach a stimulating and complete climax that totally filled the space with an extreme amount of texture. Witnessing them perform was willingly taking in an apocalypse of noise.
Heading now to Bedlam & Squalor, Motte served as a pensive and beautiful breather between sets. Stepping into center stage, the multi-instrumentalist and solo artist unveils her apparatus – the energy in the room is undeniable. A small yet intimate audience is crowded closely around her, most of them sitting, while field recordings of the windy seaside establish the beginning of a new song. Plucky synth passages, dolphin-call violin and theremin support Motte’s airy soundscapes which are softly captivating, like watching waves crashing against a cliffside in the nighttime. She layers loops of violins on top of one another, creating a beautiful and surreal conversation between each passage as they reverberate through us – it’s beholding how from just one instrument the different loops morph together and change into new sounds.
I was greatly looking forward to seeing Womb perform at Meow, with their singular brand of ambient/indie/dream rock that recalls Cocteau Twins, but as if fused with Oneohtrix Point Never. I knew in an instant when vocalist and guitarist Cello Forrester opened by bowing their guitar, this band would hold my attention firmly. In front of heartbursting and droning synths, Cello sings “I dreamt I was a butterfly, I dreamt I was dissolving, I dreamt I was a revolving door”, a profession equally surreal as it is familiar. Each member of Womb has distinctive stage presence too, and their own qualities to fawn over as an audience member. Cello floats across the stage with ease, and vocally has the grace of a Caroline Polachek or Weyes Blood. Drummer Georgette Brown is so in tune with Cello, it feels immensely intimate to watch her eyes dart over to them every so often. The same goes for Haz – twin brother to Cello – who twiddles with severe purpose over each knob on his synth. Womb made me cry thrice during their set, notably during their cover of SOPHIE’s “Is It Cold in the Water?”, the song that made me discover them.
I don’t get the opportunity to catch any sets here properly, but Hotel Bristol was brilliantly lofty and provided the perfect space for getting your groove on. I briefly saw Michael Logie play, who had a super punchy and groovy dance sound! And Valhalla, with its grungy and black metal aesthetics hosted the likes of Koizilla, who, from what I saw, caused an expectant amount of heavy, punk-flecked ruckus.
My final set of the night is Jujulipps: perhaps my most anticipated too. Since discovering “Saucy” last year, her commanding and in-your-face style of rap has had me dying to catch her live. DJ Mangaliso sets the tone and hypes up the Meow crowd. Her club-ready afrobeat remixes of 2000s classics by the likes of Kelis, Riri and Nicki pump us up perfectly. Eventually, Juju prances onto the stage in a black fur coat and a woven bikini-skirt two piece and the crowd loses their mind. She sheds her fur after finishing the first track, and someone in the crowd trills “Reveeeeeal yourseeeelf”, to which Juju vivaciously responds, “You don’t have to tell me twice!” She performs her brand new and banging new single “Game Over” with unmatchable confidence, and then invites another guest to the stage: monkey man Waguan. Together they perform their collaborative track “OUTSIDE”, which gets everybody jumping by the end. And then, the song we’ve all been waiting for: “Airplane Mode”. There isn’t a person in the room that doesn’t know the words. The energy is so high, she performs it twice in a row; the woman just has seemingly endless amounts of energy. By the time her set is over, she proclaims without hesitation, “This was one of the best damn festivals I ever done did”, strutting off the stage as we scream her name. An explosive and riveting end to the night.
Slowly making my way out of the horde of Meow attendees; e-scooters, Ubers, and people braving the rain appeared as I left the festival feeling invigorated at what the city has to offer. As I’m speeding my way through the wet, wet streets, I think about how Great Sounds Great may end up becoming one of Pōneke’s quintessential festivals. Alongside its expansive programming, it is such a perfect distillation and representation of some of Wellington’s principal venues. Eyegum and co. have been creating spaces for artists of all walks of life for some time now, but a night like this has got to be the most excellent celebration of what a night out in our city can look like. And my experience was only a small slice of it too! There are bound to be many more gig offerings in 2024 suited to everyone’s taste buds, with most of Pōneke’s venues majorly booked out until next year. The live music scene of Wellington is exuberant and so alive, and Great Sounds Great only proved that fact.