A new day at the festival bought a huge influx of day pass holders (i.e. the softies unwilling to pull weekenders), meaning that Latitude’s relatively compact site was somewhat overrun, with the crowds outside the smaller tents sometimes ten rows thick. If you could get a view though, there was plenty more of the arts to be consumed.
Phil Jupitus, under his old moniker of Porky The Poet, indulged in his first love at the Poetry Arena, with his anecdotal verses telling of the perils of being a ‘Ska Dad’, meeting Paul McCartney at the BBC and the peculiar tale of Einstein sitting confounded in a pub with the inventor of love. Though his comic skills and richly detailed poems weren’t lacking in entertainment value, his poetry lacked the cadence that the better young poets had displayed beforehand. Perhaps his poet credentials are rusting whilst he’s on that pop quiz.
Shortly afterwards, Kiwi comedian Al Pitcher launched into a hilarious documentation of the festival so far in the cabaret tent, having snooped around the site with his digital camera to hand for the past day, before showing his best slides from all over the planet as evidence of the world’s ridiculousness.
THITH
The Hundred In The Hands took to the Sunrise Arena in the woods in early afternoon, the seemingly shy duo playing their sparse, low-key disco to a modest but attentive crowd. Jason Friedman set the beats running before freewheeling with some guitar playing, and Eleanore Everdell occasionally stripped the mic from the stand to wander nonchalantly whilst crooning her icy vocals. They’re not a forceful pair, but already have a few lovely singles of electronica to woo you with, including the luscious ‘Sleepwalkers’.
The gritty author, and keen music fan, Bret Easton Ellis sat for a Q&A hosted by the Culture Show’s Miranda Sawyer at the Literary tent. Despite the yuppie persona he has projected for most of his career, Bret was dressed surprisingly casually in a hoody, jeans and trainers. Still, it didn’t spoil the recollections of writing his harrowing series of novels from debut Less Than Zero to the reprise of its characters in his new release Imperial Bedrooms. A fascinating, if sometimes uncomfortable talk: Bret explained a range of topics, from his own relation to Patrick Bateman of American Psycho as a affluent young man in 1980’s New York, to the pandering of “demented optimists” in Hollywood, whilst also answering questions from the audience with deprecating wit.
Frightened Rabbit- a favourite of Bret’s- marched onto the Word Arena at 5 and launched into ‘The Modern Leper’ as part of a typically keen, sweaty performance. The Scottish indie five-piece harbour quite a growing reputation for their intelligent, lustful music. Playing to a burgeoning Latitude audience, frontman Scott addressed the festival’s family-friendly demographic, checking before launching into a song about sex: “I hope everyone has heard of fucking. You haven’t? Ah, it’s great, you should try it sometime”. More reservedly, after ending the set with ‘Keep Yourself Warm’, he abandoned his guitar to the stage to chant the Hold Steady’s sweet closing mantra about the loyalty of Southtown Girls.
Frightened Rabbit
The Lake Stage was curated by Radio One DJ Huw Stephens and featured a wonderfully eclectic mix of upcoming bands. Two such acts on Saturday were Bristolian heroes Zun Zun Egui who brought their blend of tropical funk to the crowds with a good deal of enthusiasm, and Nedry who combine hard, dark dubstep beats with wispy vocals. Well placed between the two main stages and the smaller tents meant you could drop by the stage to discover some new dazzling and bizarre acts with minimal fuss.
The Faraway Forest had a beautiful outdoor stage under the pines, where the Royal Opera House put on a performance of Pleasure’s Progress at dusk. Straight out of Bedlam, the cast of madmen cavorted their way through scenes of drunken revelry on Gin Street and the failing id of a bored housewife, amongst other madcap happenings. Although the dancing, singing and sexed up straight jacket costume designs were all wonderful when taken separately, the performance was marred by the fact that there was no clear thread of narrative linking the scenes to be found amid the madness. This, and the troupe’s need to repeatedly rely on cheap dick jokes to spruce up the libretto.
The Royal Opera House
Between Laura Marling, Mumford & Sons and Noah and the Whale, there was a triumvirate of neo-folk represented at the festival. The latter collected a mass of evening stragglers at the Word Arena, backed by both gospel singers and a horn section. Amongst the peppy radio hits (‘Five Years Time’) from their debut album, Charlie Fink & co. played the gentle beauties from their lovelorn follow-up The First Days of Spring with casual grace that the audience seemed to accept a degree of serenity not commonplace when a music festival approaches its daily pinnacle.
The XX are another act that specialise in understatement, and despite their swelling success in the past year (in 2009 they played on the Lake Stage here) a band that are by nature so introverted were a strange choice to headline the Word Arena. If you look past the beatnik façade you could see that they were clearly happy to be there, but their lack of engagement never betrayed many warm sentiments. But with the London trio’s often-mesmeric melodies swimming along and the stage bathed in low lighting and fog, The XX put on a pulsating show for those who didn’t find it all too hypnotic.
