Rock and Pop: LATITUDE FESTIVAL 2010 - John Cooper Clarke, Belle and Sebastian + more...
Published: 29 July 2010
by VICTORIA HINTON and GILL RIMMER
AS USUAL it was some of the smaller venues which provided the highlights at Latitude festival's fifth anniversary in sunny Suffolk.
One of the festival's great strengths is its eclecticism of performances, venues and activities to happen upon. London-based musical comedy duo Frisky and Mannish performed their new show The College Years to a packed out Cabaret tent, John Cooper Clarke made Latitude history by instigating its first ever standing-room-only poetry gig, and Tom Jones sang gospel in the woods.
That's not to say the main stages didn't provide good entertainment, and this year's musical line-up was one to be rivalled.
Glasgow's finest Belle and Sebastian were the surprising headliners on the Saturday night, and after a four year hiatus, they played an energetic set of old and new.
The set featured a version of the Rolling Stones 'Jumpin' Jack Flash' (spontaneously included after lead singer Stuart Murdoch had an anxiety-ridden dream about it) and invited audience members up on stage to dance to the singable 'The Boy With the Arab Strap' which looked great fun (although sadly your reviewer was standing firmly in the crowd with notepad and pen to hand...).
The inclusion of James on the bill looked like a nod to the 30 and 40-something parents who make up a large proportion of the Latitude crowd, however they proved to be the quintessential festival band, playing a crowd-pleasing set which included indie-pop anthems 'Sit Down' (their energy ensured that nobody did), 'Laid' and 'Tomorrow'.
A round up of musical highlights must ensure that The National's headlining set on Friday night is mentioned and in its rousing glory, as not to be missed.
The sun remained firmly in the sky for the entirety of the weekend and Sunday afternoon had relaxed buzz about it as Mumford & Sons played a folksy, but lively set on the main stage.
For the relatively few festival-goers who weren't enjoying this, Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake was enchanting a huge audience on the Lake Stage, and for those taking a break from trying to decide which of five excellent things happening concurrently around the site, there was Pandora's Playground providing less strenuous activities - an advice booth (which could have helped with the former) or scrabble, a blanket and complimentary biscuits. But if all that seemed too idyllic, elsewhere, in the Faraway Forest, the audience in the Theatre tent were being challenged and chilled by Camden's Mark Ravenhill in his haunting monologue, The Experiment.
The narrator describes the unthinkable, the use of children as guinea pigs for medical experiments, and his shifting version of events left the audience slightly creeped out as they filed their way back out into the woods for the last few hours of the festival.