Great Sounds Great festival showcases Wellington’s music scene at its best

“When the world is so shit it’s nice to do anything at all — even just playing gigs," a perpetually chatty and weary Samuel Flynn Scott told me in the full-to-the-brim Cuba Street venue San Fran. The Phoenix Foundation's founding member voiced his gratitude to promoters Eyegum Music Collective for their dedication to arranging this festival when it might be easier just not to.

Flynn Scott's band has been around the block with their fans, and that’s what Great Sounds Great entailed, as more than 40 acts played at 10 venues across the inner-city suburb of Te Aro.

Some venues were too busy. Before the Phoenix Foundation’s show, this resulted in some argy-bargy, but when their mighty track 'Buffalo' moonwalked backwards onto the stage, all was well. Vigorous head nodding ensued.

'Ritual Hex', pitched as Phoenix Foundation's newest and “best ever” song by Luke Buda, brought a hypnotic and grown-up groove and was another highlight.

Earlier in the day, I didn’t catch the live-scored cinema by locals The Spectre Collective or find out what the secret film showing was because the venue was at capacity.

No bother. I sat on a mid-century chair in the vintage shop downstairs to check the festival schedule, then made a first trip across Victoria Street to St. Peter's on Willis, where the flute-wielding Jazmine Mary was already getting into the tempo-shifting 'My Brilliance' - the first track on her latest album I Want To Rock and Roll.

The acoustically impressive church was consecrated a long time ago. Dazzlingly dressed in a pink jumpsuit, Mary praised the sound engineers, the lord and the beautiful audience sitting in the pews and upstairs balcony before her.

In the same venue, Dunedinte Shayne P. Carter captivatingly performed renditions of 'Randolph's Going Home' and 'Hail' beneath halo lights as night fell outside.

One minute in a place of God. Nek minute to the darkness of the earthly Valhalla.

Cloaked in green and purple fog onstage, post-punk five-piece Half/Angel introduced songs 'Getting the Jitters' and 'Debt Collectors'. Dramatic stuff as loose out-of-time angular notes coalesced into a hazy psychedelica.

Back on Cuba Street, Flying Nun was packed out for the four-piece Cruelly.

In the Edward Street venue Meow, Reb Fountain, with her arm in a sling, called for government action over the war in Gaza and launched into 'Nothing Like' from her latest album How Love Bends.

Fountain ends with the menacing 'Don't You Know Who I Am', then it was time for a pitstop upstairs in Hotel Bristol and a quick dose of liquid drum and bass from DJ Baeoli.

Back at Meow, after crossing Victoria Street yet again, musical urbanist and Whanganui dweller Anthonie Tonnon's set proved to be a more religious experience than even those at St. Peter's.

Reminiscent of actor Walton Goggins’ mega-church preacher character Baby Billy Freeman in the TV series The Righteous Gemstones, Anthonie Tonnon embarked on an outrageous autobiographical sermon containing gripes with the Earthquake Commission and his hunt for a structural engineer — or that's the gist I got from the back of the room.

It was part stand-up routine, part local council consultation submission, part musical performance.

Proper indie legends The Bats are responsible for two of this country’s most iconic songs — 'North by Northwest' and 'Made Up in Blue' — which they stormed through at San Fran.

The Christchurch band are still at it after more than 40 years, and their latest single 'Loline', recorded in Port Chalmers with Tex Houston, retains that fuzzy slow-release punchiness.

Past midnight, during local legends Hans Pucket’s final track 'Comfort', a fellow audience member watching a band young enough to be his children offered me an olive from a plastic container he was holding.

At that moment, an age gap was bridged. As I looked around me, I was surrounded by young and old — some way past their bedtime and others about to kick on elsewhere — all nodding their heads in unison.

The morning after, organisers Eyegum Music Collective said seeing the smiles on everyone’s faces throughout the night made it all worthwhile.

“There were amazing artists showcased from across the country," said the collective’s Joel Cosgrove.

Great Sounds Great sounded great on paper, and it turned out pretty good.