Whilst the naysayers are happy to snidely point out that Latitude is more middle class than organic fish’n’chips hand-cooked by Rick Stein and wrapped in a copy of the Guardian, after having experienced the wilds of Glastonbury, Les Eurocks, and T In The Park over the weekends prior to the bookish Suffolk shindig, a bit of culture was pretty welcome this weekend.
Naturally, being a refined sort, NME‘s first dose of Latitude’s sophisticated élan came from visiting the Modern Toss tent on Friday afternoon, dicking around with their Periodic Table Of Swearing, and having a Modern Toss portrait drawn. It will come as no surprise to anyone who follows me on Twitter to learn that my highlight was seeing The National headlining on Friday night, as joined by St Vincent’s Annie Clark. Guitarist Aaron Dessner explained that they wanted to play at least one song from each of their five albums, which made for a pleasingly surprising set.
Elsewhere, seeing Everything Everything pack out the Word Arena on Sunday afternoon made me feel like a proud ma – everyone knew all the words to their songs, and Jebus knows they are not the easiest lyrics to learn (sample: “Chest pumped elegantly elephantine / Southern hemisphere by Calvin Klein“) – and they played an as-yet untitled new song that sounded like a super sleazy A-Ha. Can’t wait to hear more of that.
Although I didn’t make it into the Comedy Arena, my humorous highlight came from witnessing Glasvegas’ James Allan introduce Carl Barat as “the greatest artist in the world today”. They then went on to murder ‘Be My Baby’.
What were your highlights? Let us know below…
You can see all the news, blogs and photos from the weekend here. Plus, watch all of our videos from the festival below, including Hurts, Everything Everything, and Foals:
Next stop – V and Reading & Leeds. Head over to NME.COM/festivals and download our NME Festival App – Powered By BlackBerry.