Australasia’s biggest music festival is over for another year.
Electric Avenue descended on Hagley Park in Christchurch on Friday and Saturday, featuring five decades’ worth of music across one weekend.
Rolling Stone AU/NZ was there — check out five key takeaways from this year’s festival below.
Returning Legends
The utterly legendary Split Enz made a grand return at Electric Avenue on Friday evening, with Tim Finn telling the crowd that it was an extra special occasion — it also happened to be their 1000th gig.
“Wearing dapper suits, undoubtedly inspired by their iconic band photo, it was everything I wanted and more as a young gal who had grown up listening to my parents’ Split Enz compilation CD on repeat,” our reviewer wrote.
Split Enz played classic such as “Six Months in a Leaky Boat” and “I See Red” to a notably diverse crowds featuring young and old alike.
“People my age were with their parents as festival veterans were right in front of the stage. Others, like the 80-year-old legend in my Uber Pool, were going just for the band. With so many different ages in the crowd, it felt nice to feel part of such a diverse collective as well as something quintessentially Kiwi,” our reviewer added.
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Split Enz followed their Electric Avenue comeback with the announcement of a New Zealand arena tour. Details here.
Image: Split Enz Credit: Radlab
Crowd Chaos
The only negative in what was otherwise a lovely weekend of live music, according to our reviewer, was some elements of the crowd.
“[A]s half the festival’s expected crowd surged towards The Hangar around 6.25pm, people’s behaviour got kind of… feral,” they wrote. “People were rude, they were moving in packs, and the air was tight with tension. Outside The Hangar, as thousands spilled out, the air was sour with Red Bull and vomit; it was horrid.”
Surprise Setlists
As well as teasing unreleased music, Australian superstar DJ Dom Dolla remixed New Zealand’s unofficial anthem “Slice of Heaven” by Dave Dobbyn with his own track “Rhyme Dust”.
Elsewhere, L.A.B covered Simple Minds’ classic hit “Don’t You Forget About Me”, and they also cheekily launched into the festival’s namesake, Eddy Grant’s “Electric Avenue”.
@domdolla giving electric avenue a slice of dust 🇳🇿
Pop Nostalgia
Kesha put on a stunning and carefree show, the 2010s pop icon “[b]ringing the performance, theatrics, and storytelling to her 60-minute set,” according to our review.
“[…] Kesha began her show holding her own wax head, modelled after her iconic Animal and Cannibal era. Blinded by nostalgia, and reminded of my old Now That’s What I Call Music CD collection, I was rapt,” they added.
@theedgenz we 🫶 Kesha !!!
Local Love
As the headline to our official live review made abundantly clear, it was the Kiwis who stole the show at Electric Avenue, which is saying something considering the performance levels of the aforementioned Dom Dolla and Kesha.
“Walking through the gates just after 2pm on Saturday, the promise of an afternoon full of homegrown Christchurch talent filled my heart with happiness,” our reviewer gushed. “It was fantastic to see the festival organisers prioritise local talent on their lineup as much as the international names — something I was interested to see after Live Nation bought a 51% stake in Team Event. Electric Avenue, thankfully, had not forgotten its roots.”
Fazerdaze, Goodwill, There’s a Tuesday, Caitlin, and many, many more local acts shone at Australasia’s biggest music festival.
