Latitude Festival, 17th-19th July 2009

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Photo credit: Ket Majmudar

Latitude is routinely referred to as the middle-class festival. By which they mean there’s a poetry tent, Kasabian won’t be playing and nobody’s going to throw beer over you. Henham Park, a calf-shredding venue that enforces a 25 minute walk from entrance to main arena, has its own natural beauty that contributes to affairs. With a lake and wooded areas, as well as the little touches around all that (from artworks to orchestral performances on a lakeside stage to the celebrated coloured sheep) it gives Latitude a cosmopolitan touch. The weather had a go at spoiling proceedings with daily overnight rainstorms, but average temperatures remained high and even the most trampled on parts somehow remained merely spongy rather than outright muddy. Latitude has the air of an overgrown family-friendly event, and apart from the odd strain of Skins kids, there’s very little to fear from your surroundings, littered as they are with the artistically curious and the weekend day-tripper.

Friday
With a choice this big it’s best to start by merely wandering around for a while. Catching the odd bit whether it be The Late Greats, who haven’t really grown into their own skin yet as something of their own, Robyn Hitchcock‘s short and obtuse set as part of Robin Ince’s Book Club or Adam Buxton’s music video forum Bug. Eventually I alight on The Broken Family Band in raucuous, almost celebratory mood, Steven Adams as dry as ever between songs and only disloged from unflappability when he nearly gets stung by a wasp during the last song. Neil Hannon’s busman’s holiday The Duckworth Lewis Method proves a fascinating diversion before the usual electro-sensory overload that is Of Montreal live. Kevin Barnes, seemingly wearing two frock coats, and his theatrical company, give it their all but the audience seem slow to respond and they feel underpowered and not as all-encompassing as usual.

Which, even if the preferred darkness setting is compromised by being in a marquee bathed in sunlight, does not apply to Fever Ray. Karin Dreijer Andersson is sporting her native American monster-troll headgear and the rest of her band are in assorted hats and makeup. From behind a swathe of dry ice comes this somewhat unsettling but actually quite warm electronic retro-futurist pulse, replete with overhead laser show occasionally flickering in time with the music while Karin’s distorted vocals ramp up the intensity. Anyone who can turn this setting into a paganist electrical storm deserves to be lauded, and it remains one of the weekend’s defining moments.

The Sunrise Arena is well out in the woods, pretty much an ideal setting for earthier, woodier pleasures. Two such put in fine sets; Blue Roses‘ intimate folkspun charm makes a connection through Laura Groves’ delicate vocals and sparsely ethereal arrangements, while SXSW buzz band Local Natives suggest the cracked joy of The Acorn and Funeral Arcade Fire through their harmonies and percussive multi-instrumentalist nervous energy. They might fit in perfectly with recent trends, but that doesn’t mean they can’t make their own impact.

Mew have been touring with Nine Inch Nails recently, and on the basis of their new first song, it shows. It’s luckily the furthest they get away from the beating melodic pop heart at the centre of their awkward semi-prog approach in a set that only features the closing grandiosity of ‘Comforting Sounds’ from And The Glass Handed Kites. A forceful, electrifying set was followed by Mew’s polar opposites, the London-bound earthy pleasures of the reformed Squeeze. Sorry, Regina Spektor fans, but I really wasn’t going to pass them up just for TLOBF review purposes, and a joyful tight set. Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook exchanged timeless new wave riffs and trademark octave apart harmonies as if they’d never been apart.

Despite the unwelcome attentions of light showers throughout, you know not to turn away from a set by headliners the Pet Shop Boys. You know it’ll be big on theatrics, and so it proved with a box-based theme tonight – Tennant sings opener ‘Heart’ while wearing one on his head – plus dancers perform and videos shows in front of a great big wall of white boxes. It’s said of many, but you forget how many great songs the PSBs have. A setlist that veers from huge hits to new songs to album offcuts right across their near 25 years reinforces the notion. Neil Tennant works through various suits and sings with a very English clarity undimmed by the years. Chris Lowe looks unscrutable behind his Macbook. Of course he does. Night one finishes with Jeremy Warmsley and side project Little Words running through cuts from the back catalogues of Tom Waits and Daniel Johnston in Warmsley’s own style to good overall effect.

Saturday
Having missed Regina for selfish purposes yesterday, I had to see Wildbirds & Peacedrums‘ tribal gathering open the following day’s action, if only to ensure a future on this site. Mariam Wallentin is a tireless frontwoman, either thrashing the life out of her own percussion or whirling around the stage, at one point singing without the mike. Her huge bluesy voice carried wherever she trod. Marnie Stern is affected by technical issues but her ridiculously technical shredding carries the day for as long as it stays the right side of mere hair metal bombast. St Vincent is off in her own world, an extended band featuring flute and clarinet bringing light and shade to the darker, more fragile parts of songs from Actress. Not an unquestioned triumph, but a reinforcement of the notion that Annie Clark has talent to spare.

Those of us who thought the promise of Broken Records‘ early recordings was compromised by the album’s bombast would find much to revive our hopes in their Obelisk Arena set. Heavy on the dramatic peaks and troughs with tumultuous Balkan-suggestive intensity before ‘Slow Parade’ brings everyone graciously back down to earth. Joe Gideon & The Shark, on the Huw Stephens curated Lake Stage, have their own take on intensity. Ramping up their primitively loud blues with loop pedals, darker than night literate storytelling – and with Joe it very much is spoken word storytelling, more or less – and Viva’s drumming theatrics. Emmy The Great knows her way round a lyric, if more gently, but her set is held up by what seems to be bad onstage sound, and, in her words not ours, “a shit guitar”. Still, there’s a promising new song and plenty of people willing her on.

Patrick Wolf… well, what are we to make of him these days? As someone who always fancied himself as a dandy, it’s perhaps not surprising that he’s now dressing more flamboyant than ever, and in more than one set of clothes too. The problem is that he wants to be a big outrageous glammed-up star while his fanbase, by and large, preferred it when he had some underground mystery to him. So a fine version of ‘The Libertine’ is followed by a ritual slaughtering of ‘Bloodbeat’, for which he brings on a mate whose purpose seems to be to jump about and shout “make some noise!” in a silver foil suit. “He’ll be number one soon!” Wolf admiringly comments afterwards. No, Patrick. No he won’t.

Pulled Apart By Horses‘ approach is simpler – play as if you’re at Download. So they pull the requisite rock shapes to go with their hardcore riffola and are all over in twenty minutes. They seem completely out of place with pretty much everything else on the bill. No worries though as, following them on Lake, The XX go the opposite route and barely move at all. Their droning, beat driven dub narcotic sound system nodding to R&B and dubstep, coming across better live than on record while very much remaining a London scene thing.

It’s said by many that Camera Obscura never look like a comfortable live band, especially at festivals, but getting Tracyann Campbell to look more cheerful would surely receive a similar reaction to that if you asked Terry Hall to do likewise. It is, at least, a confident set. Swooningly sophisticated while still nodding to the 60s girl pop and country they’re increasingly turning into their own sound. Campbell’s mike cuts out for a full verse of ‘French Navy’, apparently to her ignorance, but otherwise it seems they’re slowly taking to the big stages.

Doves made it to the big stages long ago, and by usual comparison Jimi Goodwin is in positively chipper mood – remarking on the surroundings and the number of kids and wigs in the audience. As such it’s a borderline euphoric set, where the songs from Kingdom Of Rust don’t sound out of place alongside the previous hits and the atmospheric touches of the latter pack a punch. The closing percussive salvo on ‘There Goes The Fear’ feels like a vindication. Out across the park Bombay Bicycle Club have picked up a huge audience for the Lake stage. When did they get so notable?

You also pretty much know what you’re going to get from Spiritualized. Jason Pierce will stand to one side in shades and say nothing, dry ice will envelop most of the set and everything will be set fair for the stratospheric. And that’s what happens, give or take the odd blistering wail of white noise and feedback. It’s full on from first to last, and quite draining just taking it all in. If there weren’t decibel limiters in place, I fear I’d never have got to sleep.

Sunday
But I did, and so did a lot of other people given how many had showed up well before the commencement of activities on the Obelisk stage at midday. You’d think someone important was on.

Thom Yorke, of course, playing his first proper solo set. It’s a twelve song set over about seventy minutes, featuring Thom in a pleasingly light mood, wondering whether he could pull off the look of Saturday headliner Grace Jones and suggesting we “go for a piss” during one of the three unreleased songs played. Using guitar, baby grand piano, analogue keyboard and loop pedals he pulls off fine versions of five tracks from The Eraser plus ‘There There’, ‘Everything In Its Right Place’, ‘Weird Fishes/Argpeggi’ and ‘Videotape’. The very least that can be said is I’ve had worse wake-up calls.

Helpfully, Sugar Crisis sound like you imagine they would from their name, and not always in a good way. They’re about to be completely blown out of the water regardless by a set that even by Fight Likes Apes‘ all-action standards takes some beating. Not least as keyboardist Pockets has helpfully brought a log commandeered from the woods with him and during the second song proceeds to smash it up on the crowd barrier to much localised bemusement and borderline terror. Meanwhile MayKay was her usual bundle of crowd invading, hirsute energy and with plenty of devotees at the front they can’t help but create a sizeable impression.

A lot of bands playing sets mostly comprising songs from an unreleased album wouldn’t get away with it, but such is the quality of Wild Beasts‘ forthcoming material that, aided by a slowly brightening day, they can play five new songs in a seven song stint and draw people inexorably in. Hayden Thorpe’s newly grown mullet and stonewashed denim attire is probably a step too far regarding their hovering 1980s nods, but the new material heralds a singular pecularity and lushness that can’t help but suggest they’ve burrowed deep into their Smiths and Associates records to find the bits lesser minds cannot reach.

Back in the Sunrise Arena, something extraordinary happens. Not that it’s overrunning, as it’s a festival and that’s always bound to happen eventually, but right at the end of the set by Villagers - Irish anthemic indie, you needn’t concern yourselves – just as they launch into their big all-out finish the sky, bright only a couple of minutes before, erupts into a torrential downpour that demonstrates the folly of building a tent that has a gap in the roof between stage and fans. Not to mention one that springs a couple of leaks further back. The resultant visual would cost video directors thousands to pull off.

Luckily the worst has passed, and the sun even briefly emerges, during Sky Larkin‘s set. They’ve grown a certain amount of showmanship too. Growing into a confident live force, not least in drummer Nestor Matthews, whose legendary facial contortions are augmented by a playing power that sees him break both sticks during the first song before going on to crack a cymbal in half. Inevitably, he climaxes by falling through the kit. Back on the Obelisk main stage The Rumble Strips suffer from both the wetness and the fact their new songs aren’t as engaging as the old ones.

The Vaselines have been playing a mere handful of international shows since reforming just over a year ago. But it’s like they’d never been away. Doomed to go down in posterity as Kurt Cobain favourites, their lyrically frank fuzzbomb noise-over-melody indiepop is exactly where The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart got it all from. FFrances McKee wonders aloud whether anyone watching has an American accent before admitting “it’s not just the accent, you’ve got to have a really big dick as well”. Such potty mouthed behaviour would be unbecoming the likes of The Invisible – in fact, any banter is at a minimum – but they work the genre spanning experimentalism of their album into fuzzier shapes. They’ve been touted as the UK’s own TV On The Radio but a better comparison would be with Massive Attack circa Mezzanine when they started bringing their dark post-punk influences to the fore.

With a reliance on high budget pop and girly presence, Marina and the Diamonds seem less like the next big thing and more like a handy spare in case Florence & The Machine goes wrong. The real tips in sophisticated pop cool come from a singer nearly two decades Marina’s senior. The trouser suited Sarah Cracknell causes an involuntary reaction in a lot of thirtysomething men, and Saint Etienne prove that while trends come and go it’s possible for dance inflected music to remain timeless. It feels like the Foxbase Alpha heavy set has been tarted up, somehow brassier and bigger, so much so that recent single ‘Method Of Modern Love’ seems like their most stylistically aged track.

And the reformatted hits just keep on coming. Magazine still seem somewhat at odds even with their post-punk bretheren, given Editors are on the Obelisk while they’re in the Uncut Arena. Howard Devoto has chosen a pink jacket for the occasion, while bassist Barry Adamson appears to have come as a Dickensian character. Once someone’s remembered to turn Devoto’s mike on a verse late, their taut, ominous dystopian fantasies played out not as revivalism but just as fresh as they came. There’s no little talent either – Adamson and Noko, the guitarist replacing the late John McGeogh, played off each other superbly – and a charismatically in charge Devoto running the show. It’s as if nothing had ever come in the band’s way between then and now. Yet another triumph for the semi-mocked old guard of Latitude.

After that, the only way the festival could have finished, with apologies to Gossip in Uncut, was with Obelisk headliners (and one time Adamson employers) Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. This, the dirtiest rock’n’roll band in the world of many years’ standing, do not disappoint. Though they refuse to come back for an encore after playing a 70 minute set that finishes a couple of good song lengths before curfew. However, it’s an electrifying set at a tremendous volume, which even Cave complains about at one stage, and the Bad Seeds seem to be pretty much at the top of their game despite eighteen months touring Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!. Kicking off with the menacing ‘Tupelo’ and ending with an extended freakout on the spectacularly sweary (family friendly festival, remember) ‘Stagger Lee’. ‘The Ship Song’ breaks hearts, ‘We Call Upon The Author’ is all sorts of controlled chaos, and Newton Faulkner is observed singing and swaying along. There’s hope for him yet. It’s a dynamic way to end a festival full of surprises, coming good on both reputation and potential.