Latitude continues its Thoreau-meets-Festivals vibe in style

There’s been a lot written about Latitude in  recent years- a small-time alternative to Glastonbury, featuring not just hot and highly fragrant new bands but their older, more lavender-scented counterparts and a whole lot of literature, comedy, cabaret and people with fake horse’s heads and dinner suits to make the toddler in anyone wet their bed in either terror or excitement.
 
I was a Latitude virgin, and it was indeed a gentle lover, embracing me with its painted sheep and its fairy-lights in the woods magic. Exploration of the grounds revealed little secrets as intimate as whispers between lovers- the mirrored dragon settling amongst the other artwork hidden in the trees, or the flags creaking in the breeze. I don’t mean to sound like a Laurie Lee novel or anything, but I can’t recall a festival I’ve been to where the headliners have not been on the main stage at half nine every night, but around us in lakes and foliage and rolling hills. It certainly beats larger festivals such as Leeds, where the only visible vegetation is the bits of carrot in some sozzled urchin’s piles of vomit.

Friday

The first thing on offer at Latitude is a trip to the Music and Film arena, where there is being screened a film about the phenomenally successful and haunting Postsecret website. An origin story of sorts, the film features a selection of the anonymous secrets members of the public send in to form a sort of communal art project. In turns heartbreaking and hilarious, it’s a good idea to show this sort of thing in a darkened tent as by the end of it all, not even at showing of that godawful All-American Rejects song featuring the cards can clear the tear-shining faces of many of the audience.

Blinking into the daylight, we head over to the aptly-named Lake Stage to see Leicestershire post-rock ambient types Kyte. The walk there indicates exactly why small festivals are so much more satisfying than their bigger brothers- going from one arena to another doesn’t involve several day’s worth of rations and the odd Sherpa or two. Kyte themselves are twinkly enough, and oddly beautiful, if the daylight doesn’t really suit their sound. Still, glacial dronings, whispered vocals and gentle beepings evoke an eerily beautiful soundscape, one of cold wind off a mountain, or the bleeping of a satellite in some forgotten corner of the solar system. Songs like Sunlight and Boundaries sound even spookier in the afternoon sun.

Over on the Obelisk Arena, a teatime set by festival stalwarts British Sea Power is unfortunately verging on the average. Not the fault of the band, mind you, who open with All in It, the droning opening track of their new album Do you like Rock Music? and grind a trio of air-raid sirens to giddy heights whilst a Bulgarian Woman’s choir (honestly) brought along specially sing the song‘s ‘we close our eyes’ coda. Unfortunately the sound is such that frontman Yan spends much of his time frantically gesticulating to the sound engineers whilst attempting to pin down gossamer-lovely songs such as The Great Skua. A superb rendition of The Spirit of St. Louis rescues the performance, its urgent retelling of Charles Lindbergh’s famous flight  featuring droning guitars and a notable amount of air-raid siren giving way to a noise-pop jam that left one half the audience with question marks over their heads, and the other half with question marks in their pants. I was firmly in the latter- what a band.

British Sea Power then give way to Brighton’s answer to Deerhoof, The Go! Team. This band is the perfect festival band, surely- bubblegum pop melodies, cheerleading and Sonic Youth-style guitar attacks for members of the audience who’d rather be stroking their chins than getting down. They certainly win the award for most energetic band of the weekend- they make a workout look like a game of musical statues, with vocalist Ninja bouncing around spitting ‘mad rhymes’ over pop classics such as Bottle Rocket and Ladyflash. The audience is loving it, but noticeably dies down when confronted with songs from their second, not-as-good-as-the-first album Proof Of Youth. Still, they sound so light and breezy it’s a wonder they don’t float away.

Cult Seattle band Death Cab For Cutie follow, with a rare UK date. The band are in a somewhat despondent mood, complemented by the mild drizzle that begins to fall gently on the audience, and singer Ben Gibbard’s mournful voice strikes a chord with the crowd that is difficult to overstate. When he sits down at the piano to play an extended version of Cath or breakthrough track Transatlanticism it seems like this band is singing directly into your heart, despite the enormous audience of diehard fans they accrued. The girl next to me whispers along to every word, and Death Cab must surely come away with more fans than ever after such an atmospheric and emotionally wrenching set.

It is with hearts pulled from joy to pain that we trudge away from the main stage, trying to get as much distance as possible between us and art-rock dullards Franz Ferdinand. With such emotionally divided hearts and minds we check out stoner-rock sensations Invasion, who are playing before a showing of Dali-meets-Jimmy Stewart mentalist David Lynch’s Eraserhead. Sounding like Tina Turner fronting Slayer whilst kicking the Yeah Yeah Yeahs down the nearest rubbish pile, Invasion totally rock the place out, dude.

Saturday

First on the bill for Saturday is something of a local band for me, the ebullient Team Waterpolo. Fizzy pop in the glorious sunshine doesn’t get much better than this, and although there’s not quite a Knebworth Park sized crowd, there’s certainly enough kids dancing to suggest that this young band will go far. Glitchy electronica meets Beatles-y harmony for a gently stoned vibe, and the girls swooning over the band’s collective cheekbones at the front suggest the potential for a summery pop hit in the near future.

Sebastien Tellier is quite easily the most Gallic man I have ever set eyes on. Fresh from a respectable Eurovision Song Contest defeat, he looks like if a caveman was thawed out of some ice and then put into a Miami Vice-style suit and shades. Nevertheless, he sings catchy electro-pop tunes, including his Eurovision entry Divine, and sounds much like Stereolab if they listened to less krautrock and more disco.

London-based Bengali songstress Bishi in the music and film tent is impressive. With trippy visuals behind her, and one of the most cut-glass enunciations in pop, she plays a curious mix of Bhangra, electro and Flamenco with a sitar and some huge beats. She sounds much like a female Patrick Wolf with a delightful mix of world music styles- even if some audience members are a bit puzzled by the likes of After the Party or Nights at the Circus.

The Coral are billed as an acoustic performance, but this is quickly abandoned when the squalling of Spanish Main begins. Combining sea shanties with Neil Diamond and Captain Beefheart is a risky manoeuvre, but The Coral manage it in style, with their set reminding us of some of the skewed pop perfection in their illustrious back catalogue, such as the evergreen Dreaming Of You. It seems bizarre that such a talented and adored young band are relegated to a teatime slot in one of the more minor arenas, but the fact that people are standing outside in the pissing rain to catch just a glimpse of these cosmic Scousers is testament to their place in the hearts of many.

Sigur Ros are undoubtedly the band most people are here to see this weekend when they headline the Obelisk Arena. Dressed like Billy Corgan’s weird brother, singer Jonsi is quite frankly bewitching, his beautiful falsetto voice sounding like honey being dripped from the speakers directly into our ears. A string quartet and a brass band complement the sweetly quiet xylophone duets such as the perfect Hoppipolla, and epic post-rock moments such as Glosoli and Poplagio sound as huge and as natural as whale song, especially when Jonsi uses a violin bow on his guitar  creating a sound that makes it an actual law for every music journalist to compare them to the glaciers in their home country of Iceland. Backed by giant white spheres that light up like a virginal solar system, the band sound taut and lean- not a single note is wasted, not when it can be used to create a whirlwind of sound that consumes the souls of all present- Sigur Ros are that good live.

Sunday

Sunday opens with something of an oddity, as alt-folk wunderkind Joanna Newsom invades the Obelisk Stage a full two hours before any of the other bands. Despite possessing the fan base to be a headlining artist, Joanna has a concert at London’s Somerset House later in the evening, and must essentially play a headline set during the day. With only a harp and a piano for accompaniment, she manages to tease out some of the most beautiful melodies I have ever heard- and her voice. Oh, her voice. Bizarrely different and yet eerily familiar, she sounds like a cross between fellow freaky-folk-type Devendra Banhart and Lisa Simpson in the most singularly wonderful way possible. The other odd thing to hear during her set, and one never heard during a main stage performance, is the sound of absolute silence whilst she plays. Birds could be heard in the far distance, and a pin dropping would have sounded like someone launching a sack of bells down a pit. The audience absolutely loves her, even when she forgets the words to Sawdust and Diamonds. “You shouldn’t be encouraging this”, she giggles, whilst everyone applauds ecstatically. The message is clear- Joanna Newsom could eat a live puppy on stage and her innate likeability and the beauty of her songs would make even newcomers applaud her radical new puppy-eating artistic direction. She’s as cute as a button, fresh as tomorrow’s daisy and definitely the highlight of the whole weekend.

After such an amazing opening, nothing less than a full Beatles reunion would sound as perfect, so it’s after some time that we see Canadian vocal acrobat Patrick Watson. Despite musically having an unusual reverence for the proggier elements of the musical spectrum, His voice soars more like Jeff Buckley, and jaws drop during the literally piano-bashing Giver and Luscious Life. After snatching a coveted and prestigious Juno award from fellow Canadians Feist and Arcade Fire, it seems as though his unique blend of noise, vocal effects and odd time signatures may just provoke a prog revival yet.

London’s Thecocknbullkid, AKA 22-year old Anita Bray, is oddly fitting for a sunset performance at the tiny Lake Stage, sounding like Daft Punk fronted by a female Morrissey raised on disco instead of northern miserablism. It’s a brief set but vaguely wonderful.

Wanting to end my time at Latitude with something literary, we head off to see writer and broadcaster Dave Gorman, he of the namesake-finding odyssey Are You Dave Gorman? and scathing internet examination Googlewhack. Here to perform a reading from his latest book about a completely non-corporate journey through America, he is funny and enormously interesting. Even the rather novel incident of a heckler at a book reading is dealt with in a warmly humorous fashion, Gorman wearily intoning “Fuck off and see Blondie if you want to sing along” to a chorus of cheers. It’s a perfect alternative to the depressing drizzle and the even more depressing Interpol set on the main stage, and with our minds satisfied, we head home.

So, is Latitude worth it? All in all, I’d say yes. Beautiful surroundings, superb new bands as well as classic oldies and a whole lot more even if for some bizarre reason you hate music. It’s like Glastonbury’s younger brother, who still has mittens attached on string to his jacket- what’s not to love?

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