My Latitude Experience

We’re now on the seventh edition of the annual Latitude festival, hosted in Southwold, Suffolk. For me, this is my third time round, and one of the reasons why I love the festival is because of the variety (to repeat the slogan ‘It’s not just a music festival’). See, If there isn’t a music act you fancy, you can always wander into the poetry tent. Or if that’s not your thing, there’s comedy, film, cabaret, theatre, dance, literature…seriously, the list is endless.

As with most festivals, Latitude kicks off on a Thursday night. For me, the Thursday night entertainment has never lived up to the first year I attended where Kitty, Daisy and Lewis, Phil Jupitus and Tom Jones opened the festival. It was brilliant, yet this year the Thursday entertainment, for me, wasn’t great as the main act to watch was Paul Heaton of Housemartins/ Beautiful South fame.  Although, if you are a fan, I’m sure you’d love it. There was also a DJ set from Dermot O’Leary, which might have been fun, but I gave it a miss.

Friday is when the festival really kicked off. In one day, I saw nine music acts and I think I left my legs in one of the arenas.

My Friday highlights:

The Punch Brothers are a New York based band who calls themselves ‘Punk Bluegrass’. Instrumentally, they are exceptional and Chris Thile is a charismatic frontman. Great fun!

Then, there were TuNe-YaRdS (yes, that is how it’s spelt. I assure you my keyboard is working fine). I’m not sure how to describe them…they’re completely different to anything you will hear. A little Afro-beat, a little dance-y, a little jazz. TuNe-YaRdS were like nothing I’d ever seen before.

My Friday Lowlights:

Kurt Vile’s twenty minute set did not go down well. He was an act I really looked forward to seeing live, but everything about it was shambolic. He spent most of the time tuning up and because they were delayed none of his band seemed to know what song they were playing. However, he did start to warm up near the end, but by then it was too late. I still want his babies, though.

Bon Iver. I say this with a heavy sigh, because I am a big Justin Vernon fan. Bon Iver themself was brilliant; note perfect and visually spectacular, but we have a conundrum: Bon Iver is not suitable for big, outdoor stages, yet they are now so popular that you have to place them there or we have uproar. Now, my big issue was the crowd. They were so inconsiderate. They would not shut up. Bon Iver has a mellow sound and there were many drunks who were singing over him. This makes me think about who goes to these festivals. Are they people who generally like music or people who want an expensive piss-up?

A more detailed review will be up next week!