by Tristan Summerscale

Photo: Jon Appleyard

NFTU went to check out Latitude 2008 in Suffolk a couple of weeks ago, this is what we thought:

It’s slightly enigmatic tagline is “It’s more than just a music festival” and on this it certainly delivers. As well as a fairly vast musical lineup, Latitude Festival offers a huge variety of comedy, theatre, literature, film, cabaret and probably lots of other things that we missed over the course of a long weekend in July. This variety of offerings suits a festival that, at least in terms of age, attracts an enormous range of people. Children are everywhere, even at night, which is great but also can result in slightly embarrassing moments if you make your way to the front for some of the big acts – you’ll probably feel a bit out of place and bring the average age up by many many years. Twenty and thirty somethings are also well represented but you still get a good smattering of festival oldies, who are amazing, dancing inappropriately as they do and waving their long white beards about and the like.

It’s been well documented, often slightly sneeringly, that Latitude is the most middle class festival going and while it is true that the Pimm’s tent had a poor man whose job it was to wear tweed and pretend to be Alun Armstrong (the reasonably annoying guy in the TV ads), which did start to grate, the thing that came across most about the crowd was that they were incredibly jolly and friendly towards each other. Everyone seemed very happy to be there, without the brand of self-congratulation that some festivals seem to attract. In addition to this, Suffolk must be a great place to live because all the people working at the festival seemed to be local and were incredibly friendly. At Rock Werchter Festival for example, which we also attended this summer, Belgian men wearing a uniform of unfeasibly meaty necks and thick moustaches were always on hand to tell you what you couldn’t do or just to generally tell you off – here you could pretty much wander around doing whatever you pleased. It’s probably not the place to come if you want absolutely unbridled hedonism, (we didn’t see anyone throwing up over the whole weekend which I think was a first) as the main stages finish relatively early and there are no dance acts on offer but the Guilty Pleasures DJs take over the Comedy tent until late and there seems to be a perpetual disco in the woods fuelled by pints of Aspalls cider.

The whole festival is arranged on either side of a river, with the camping and a few of the smaller stages on one bank and the main bulk of the action taking place on the other. They’ve clearly put a lot of effort in the look of the thing, and when we entered the site for the first time, late on Thursday night, the effect was pretty breathtaking. Multicoloured painted sheep, light shows flickering above the river and a brightly lit stage that extends over it, a dancefloor in the woods illuminated with fairy lights, all help to get you immediately in the mood. A bridge takes you across into the main area where the stages form a huge circle around a central area filled with picnic tables, food stalls and bars. The layout works well because, unlike at some larger festivals, the relatively small space means that you can easily move between different acts while the stages in the woods, river banks and bars hidden in remote corners of the site mean that you always feel there is more to explore.

While it’s true that they offer a lot else, the most space (and money) still seems to have been put into the music lineup and it paid off handsomely. Their headliners were impeccably chosen, with each of them seeming to fit the mood of the crowd on that particular night. Franz Ferdinand delivered a polished, crowd-pleasing set on the Friday night – It’s easy to forget how many of their songs have the ability to get a crowd going and judging by the amount of youngsters going bonkers at the front, three years without an album hasn’t inhibited their ability to win new fans. The stand-out performance on the main stage for us was eccentric Icelandic outfit Sigur Ros’s turn on the Saturday night. The set was incredibly substantial, seeming to go for hours (in a good way) as Jonsi Birgisson’s beautiful wailings completely mesmerised the crowd. While a lot of their tracks are of the lighter-waving variety some of their newer work is more up-tempo which suited the Saturday night headline slot well. The crowd responded to it, even singing along (in pure gibberish) for the last few numbers. Other highlights of the so-called Obelisk Arena over the weekend were Foals, Deat Cab for Cutie, Martha Wainwright and Beth Orton, a list that reflects the variety the organisers managed to bring even to the main stage. However, the largest tent, the Uncut Arena, challenged the main stage both in terms of atmosphere and performances. The best sets we saw came from Noah and Whale’s upbeat, folky pop which was perfectly timed on a hungover, sunny Sunday afternoon and from Scottish outfit Glasvegas who are gloriously incomprihensible when chatting to the crowd in between their equally glorious anthemic rock tracks. Despite this abundance of big stage quality, for us it was the smaller stages and tents that made the festival. For instance, the Sunrise Arena was tucked away in a corner of the woods and would have been so easy to miss but that would have been a tragedy as it hosted some great intimate sets in beautiful surroundings. Highlights included anti-folk act Emmy the Great’s hauntingly beautiful vocals and acute lyrics, as well as the cherubic Johnny Flynn.

Jostling for attention with all this musical goodness were individual poetry, literary and comedy tents, a theatre and a BBC Radio 4 tent. Again, the quality was high and there were relatively few repeated acts or embarrassingly empty ones. The problem was rather that the tents were often too small to accomodate the crowds that the big names drew. Hanif Kureishi’s Q & A was rapturously recieved, and Dave Gorman’s reading attracted crowds that stretched far outside the tent as the man himself noted (http://gormano.blogspot.com/2008/07/latitude.html). Our highlight in the literature tent was the readings of the BBC National Short Story Award by the actors who had read them on Radio 4 a couple of weeks previously. The winning story, Clare Wigfall’s ‘The Numbers’, about the hardships of life on a Scottish island, was brilliantly read by actress Raye Hendry, who evoked the sinister atmosphere of the introverted community effortlessly (for a review of all the shortlisted stories go to www.notesfromtheunderground.co.uk/reviews/nationalshortstoryaward2008) and had the audience hypnotised – no mean feat given how early in the day it was. Each of the stories had its own mood and tone that were expertly brought out by all the actors, combining to make one of the most enjoyable hours of the whole festival. The poetry tent attracted big names such as Simon Armitage and Carol Ann Duffy as well as up and coming performers such as Luke Wright and Joe Dunthorne and was well attended throughout the whole weekend – demonstrating that live literature can prove a real draw to the punters providing the lineups are intelligently picked.

The Latitude theatre tent also benefited from the support of big names such as the RSC and The Royal Court as well as the excellent Bush Theatre but it is a format that is slightly less obviously suited to the atmosphere of a festival, in that it can hard to get involved in a play if you wander over half way through (For Caroline Dyott’s piece on the experience of taking a play to a music festival go to www.notesfromtheunderground.co.uk/reviews). A way to combat this would have been to have advertised the performances clearly so that people knew exactly when to pitch up but instead there were only a few haphazard laminated cards stuck to the outside of the tent that weren’t organised in any discernible order. This was a problem that occurred all over the festival though with a less damaging effect on other arenas.   This wasn’t helped by the fact that they were charging a whopping £8 for a programme.

Gripes about scheduling aside, the sheer variety and quality of the performers at Latitude alone would justify the ticket price but it also manages to provide a splendid setting and cheerful times with a nice bunch of people.