Latitude Festival takes place in Suffolk in Henham Park and is a festival which, at its heart, lies with families and music with wide appeal. However, the festival showcases an impressive small print featuring bands on the rise, such as, this year, The Orchestra (For Now) and Westside Cowboy as well as already established musicians that are not featured on the main stage, including Air and Sorry. The festival took place across four days, and also brought a highly attended comedy tent, poetry, and plenty of late-night entertainment.
Latitude got off to a great start on Thursday night with a set by The Moonlandingz. The band features Fat White Family frontman Lias Saoudi, Adrian Flanagan and Dean Honer of Eccentronic Research Council, and, in this set at least, Jeanie from Jeanie and the Whiteboys, forming something of a supergroup for fans of the weirder music coming out of the UK in recent years. Saoudi had a captivating stage presence, spending much of the set exaggeratedly writhing around the stage in between yelps into the microphone. Musically, meanwhile, the band entertained with their brand of off-kilter, disco-inspired music.
Manchester’s most exciting new band, Westside Cowboy, attracted one of the largest crowds for the Sunset Arena, a smaller stage at Latitude Festival, and delivered one of the most powerful sets of the weekend. Each time they play live, the band seems to have evolved as musicians and performers whilst still maintaining the foundations that make them great. They draw influences from nineties bands such as Pixies and Pavement, sixties rockabilly like Johnny Cash, and more contemporary influences including Geese and Black Country, New Road. All members of the band sing or provide backing vocals, meaning their sound is loud and full. Songs such as ‘I Never Thought I’d Meet Someone I Really Loved (Til' I Met You)’ demonstrate this trading of vocals, and their music celebrates nostalgia and happiness which left everyone in attendance feeling just that.
Westside Cowboy were followed by The Orchestra (For Now). Coming out of the cauldron of creativity and experimentation that is South London and its talismanic venue the Windmill, the group blends art-rock, prog, classical, and everything in between to create something completely captivating. Although they feature a whopping seven members, each instrument feels like it’s given its space before the climactic moment where everything comes together. Each song thus feels cinematic in a way that evokes the best of Radiohead and Black Country, New Road. Singer Joe Scarisbrick complements this perfectly with a dynamic and unhinged vocal performance that alternates between crooning, spoken word, and black metal-like screams. All in all, their set was really entertaining and shows the variety of artists Latitude attracts. Their debut EP Plan 75 is well worth a listen.
Playing on the Obelisk main stage just before Friday’s headliner Sting, were Basement Jaxx. A world away from the former’s new-wave sensibilities, they played a set full of upbeat dance music. Much more notable than the music, though, was the stagecraft. Dancers and singers, as well as the duo themselves, were dressed in elaborate futuristic outfits including, at the most outlandish, one that unveiled into a flower as the person within did acrobatics. The stage itself was altered, with it being turned into a ramp with a DJ booth built into the middle.
Credit: Matt Eachus @ The Manc Photographer
Sting has had an expansive career for over 50 years and he displayed his great talent as the headliner for the Friday night. Younger people left over from Basement Jaxx joined with the older generation to sing the hits, beginning with ‘Message in a Bottle’. Sting traversed the stage with a certain ego, playing complex bass riffs and singing into a neck microphone. ‘Roxanne’ went down perfectly with the crowd, seeing everybody sing along, but it also showed Sting’s keenness to experiment. He added a verse section with a different groove to the original, akin to his solo work where most songs would develop into something funkier displaying more dance elements. His band is a trio, but is missing Stewart Copeland, the iconic and celebrated drummer from The Police, who had a wide array of influences including jazz and reggae. The current drummer for Sting, Chris Maas, has fewer noticeable influences, and therefore his percussion lacks a certain depth. Overall, however, Sting was formidable as ever, and delivered on hits spanning his whole career.
Sorry were the loudest band of Latitude Festival by far, with bass drum reverberating throughout the giant tent of the second stage. This was clearly an intentional decision made by the band; it echoes the part of their music that mimics the feeling of being in a club. Whilst their music isn’t dance music by any means, a lot of what Sorry display in their music is the fact that you can dance to it. Sorry came from a large group of Windmill scene artists, and whilst you can hear that somewhat in their music, they differ greatly from their peers. They describe themselves as pop music, and at their set they showed why they describe themselves as exactly that whilst proving they open themselves up to weirder and more nuanced influences.
Sorry opened their set with 'Jive', a single from their upcoming album Cosplay which begins with melodic, quiet vocals and builds into a dance-inducing guitar riff. Sorry are unique as songwriters, but also incorporate samples into their songs, as evidenced by the Guided By Voices sample on 'Jetplane'. Marco Pini uses multiple electronic instruments to define the band's sound, but notably he uses a Kaoss Pad to live remix vocals of lead singer Asha Lorenz, creating a sometimes unsettling but beautiful atmosphere for the vocals to sit in.
Just after Sorry, it was straight off to catch the final few songs of Silver Gore's set. They are a duo comprised of South London music scene veteran Ethan P. Flynn and singer Ava Gore; they make art-pop evocative of artists such as Jockstrap, with Gore’s voice being particularly impressive.
Saturday’s music was brought to a close by a brilliant set by nineties dance music icon Fatboy Slim, known for his live shows such as one in 2002 in Brighton which was attended by an estimated 250,000 people. With music propelled by strong baselines and a danceable tempo, there was a genuinely brilliant atmosphere within the crowd, even if there weren’t quite a quarter of a million people there this time around.
Also on Sunday, London’s Honeyglaze brought music built on deep but subtle basslines which help to create an atmospheric and soft brand of indie-rock that serves as the perfect backdrop for Anouska Sokolow’s soulfully-delivered and often self-deprecating lyrics. Built upon this formula, the band introduces more interesting elements. For example, there is definite inspiration taken from math-rock bands such as American Football in some of their guitar melodies, while on an as-yet-unreleased track they also introduced synths. Overall, their set, while mellow, proved very enjoyable.
Later on, Air turned out to be one of the highlights of the festival. The French duo is comprised of an architect and a mathematician, which becomes evident in their minimalist yet complex compositions. Their songs are incredibly atmospheric and allow the listener to sink into the flow of the music, meaning the hour and fifteen-minute set went by in an instant. In this, they mirrored the experience of seeing Slowdive or Caroline live, despite the genre differences. In terms of how they actually sound, the duo merge elements of art-pop, electronica, and jazz, to create something undeniably unique.
Afterwards, 2000s indie-rock icons Snow Patrol unfortunately played one of the less interesting sets of the weekend. While there was nothing downright bad about their music, there was also little to retain the crowd's engagement. Their songs sound very grand in a way typical of the features of 2000s indie-rock, but they lack complexity in the instruments, instead eliciting emotion using big vocals and massive guitar sounds. One highlight of the set was lead singer Gary Lightbody: his voice remains undeniably impressive for his age.
Overall, Latitude proved to be a weekend featuring some undeniably great music. Westside Cowboy, Sorry and Air proved to be highlights, alongside many other upcoming artists who dominated a fantastic line-up.
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