Festival Coverage: Latitude Festival

Photo Credit: Briony Carlin

Queuing up in the woods for Tim Key on Saturday night at Latitude Festival – all the meanwhile playing Larry David to those attempting to ‘chat and cut’ - we were struck again by the variety that this festival has to offer. We’d already seen several bands, comedy acts and transvestite interpretations of Lou Reed’sTransformer by this point, and Henham Park’s 2014 offering was a tribute to the attention organisers pay to their punters’ differing interests and tastes. Key was his usual angry best, performing his ‘Single White Slut’ show in the Theatre Tent this year (‘Why is it NEVER the Comedy Tent?), brilliantly recounting a time he gouged Anne Hathaway’s eyes out on the set of One Day.

Lily Allen headlined the Main Stage on the Friday night, filling in at the last minute for Two Door Cinema Club (who pulled out due to illness). Surrounded by giant illuminated baby bottles and making shout-outs to the working mums of the audience, Allen was, for someone who was not even supposed to be there, the best of the three headliners of the weekend. Damon Albarn’s Saturday night set was somewhat upstaged by the thunderstorm which cracked overhead. The similarly booming chants of ‘Blur! Blur! Blur!’ summed up the difficult predicament of the solo artist with a previous record as prestigious as his. Whilst Albarn eventually caved into these demands - with Graham Coxon appearing out of the woodwork to play ‘End of a Century’ and ‘Tender’. The Black Keys took Sunday’s headline slot, though again suffered from ‘new material’ syndrome and so struggled to maintain a large crowd. Many left for the alternative headliner, Lykke Li, who provided a more theatrical end to the festival.

Latitude’s opening acts this year truly shone through. The main stage’s opening acts on the Saturday and Sunday, Ibibio Sound Machine and supergroup Atomic Bomb! (covering the songs of Nigerian psychedelic-pop svengali William Onyeabor) were fantastic, both pulling a hungover crowd to its feet for a midday boogie. Hiss Golden Messenger drew a decent crowd on the i Stage on Saturday, playing much from last year’s Haw. The 6 Music Stage was the best of the bunch. Goat appeared in their best Arabian Nights best, mesmerising the audience away with one of the shows of the weekend. Hall & Oates received the most genuinely enthusiastic welcome - giving exactly what was demanded, with ‘Out of Touch’, ‘I Can’t Go For That’, ‘Rich Girl’, and ‘ You Make My Dreams Come True’ whipping the tent into a frenzy.

Latitude also went to the woods on its more ‘arts and culture’ side this year. The forest was filled with interesting artistic exhibitions and performances, featuring big names such as the Royal Shakespeare Company. RPM Productions' ‘Panopticon’ was a clever take on the prevalence of surveillance in modern society, allowing visitors to step inside a mirrored box and watch other festival-goers through CCTV cameras placed in the trees.' And perhaps most notably, the always-overflowing Comedy Tent delivered big names this year, with Simon Amstell and Marcel Lucont as highlights. And whilst several of Sunday’s comedians made light of the drabness of Damon Albarn’s performance, it is important to note that such jibes only partly reflected the mood of the festivalgoers. Indeed, whilst Latitude 2014 set itself the tall (perhaps too tall) task of living up to previous years’ headliners – especially in a year in which Glastonbury seemed to hoard acts which are the staple of its typical demographic – it was able to easily redeem itself through its ingenious reliance on diversity over fame. Unlike other festivals, one can truly explore Latitude and the smorgasbord of different entertainments within it. Music-wise, this creates a unique, open-to-anything festival environment in which any musician with enough charisma can stand out. And that has to be a good thing.