19 July 2015 (gig)
22 July 2015
Surprise acts complete Latitude's 10th Birthday...
Set in beautiful Southwold in Suffolk, Latitude Festival hosted its 10th Anniversary at the weekend showcasing a huge and diverse selection of music, comedy, literature and arts with some surprise guests providing the icing on the birthday cake for 35,000 revellers.
Having opted for a more relaxed festival this year, Latitude ticked all the boxes. This festival has certainly earned the reputation as latte-tude with a laid back, family orientated feel offering an array of activities to pass the time from swimming and punting in the lake, pampering pods of beard grooming and vintage styling to hot tubs, dance lessons, kids and teens zones, a gourmet restaurant and a constant stream of entertainment from the comedy, poetry and literature tents. Over the bridges and past the florescent pink sheep you could find some welcome respite from the beating sun in the shaded enchanted forest which offered up it's own hidden gems of cinema screens, gaming tent, artists plying their trade on gigantic white canvasses, a mobile library and a human zoo! The woods came alive at night with pumping dance music and DJ sets playing something for everyone.
Friday’s headline saw Mecury Prize-winning alt-J pull the crowds to the Obelisk stage for a night time lazer light performance followed by a secret Ed Sheeran appearance at an intimate woodland stage, announced hours before on social media.
On Saturday we saw The Charlatans, Laura Marling who performed impeccably for the third time at Latitude and Badly Drawn Boy who broke from the chilled ambience of the occasion to moan about his meagre £5k appearance fee and the stage management and in future he would stick to smaller gigs. Portishead headlined the Obelisk and another surprise performance from Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke joining the band for a rendition of 'The Rip'. Whilst The Vaccines tore it up at the BBC Radio 6 stage. Later on that night Thom Yorke could be found putting on his own experimental performance which was beset with production and sound issues but which the crowd lapped up none the less and proved a great testing ground for his new live material.
Sunday - the sun continued to shine, shade was hard to come by but the line-up wasn’t to disappoint, with the charity drinks concierge service ready to take your drinks order in the crowd (nice touch) it wasn't hard to listen to the Boom Town Rats who bought some ratitude to Latitude.
Veteran Welsh rockers the Manic Street Preachers are no stranger to festivals and delivered an up-tempo set playing some of their greatest hits from the last two decades as well as some of their newer material. Before chasing the setting sun back west across the country James Dean Bradfield told the crowd to 'enjoy Noel, he's on fucking fire'!
Noel Gallaghers High Flying Birds delivered some top-notch Noel comments and tunes like “This is like a Guardian readers’ rally,” and “Champagne (socialist) Supernova" “Don’t look back in anger”. But there was no Oasis fans in sight lobbing piss into the crowd, the audience were very unperturbed having a good singalong to Noel’s catchy new material and classic Oasis songs.
A festival that seems to have thought of everything will continue to attract some of the best performers in the world and no doubt Latitude will get better and bigger, here's to many more happy birthdays!
Reviewed by: Jennifer Joyce and James Anderson
