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Elbow added a large dollop of emotional fragility to a festival already gearing up for a
night of weeping over Icelandic slow-mo rock.
After the beautifully haunting electronica of Starlings, the group played an uneven mix of old
slowies and newbies. Grounds For Divorce and Leaders of the Free World were as coruscating as ever,
but Puncture Repair, ironically, fell flat and the extended version of Newborn - so marvellous at
their Meltdown Festival appearance - floated into the sky without leaving much
impression. Still, Elbow's bar is set so high now that their appearance would still a highlight for
many.
From unpretentious to, pretentious? Moi-s Volta? Nothing, not even electric shock therapy, can
prepare the unsuspecting observer for this. Cedric Bixler - now more hairdo than
man - leaped, somersaulted, and kung-fu kicked his way through a staggeringly intense hour long set.
Opening with a twenty five minute rendition of Christ knows what - it sounded like a bomb going off
in a glass factory - Mars Volta consolidated their reputation as the maddest, fiercest live band on
the planet. Cedric climbed the sides of the stage and berated the crow surfers, though there were
none in reality. They slipped between genres at least five times per song. The calmest, most
sensible bit of the gig was the drum solo. Breathtaking stuff.
There was something depressingly formulaic about Metronomy as they headlined the Sunrise Arena:
their matching black tops with saucers which light up in the middle, their side partings, their
choreographed dance routines and their vocal harmonies.
Those who buy into it this evening are the legion of rave kids packing out a tent which is
bleeped, blurped and pulsed with the mid-volume urgency of a toddler poking at a Korg rigged through
an iPod travel speaker. Compared to the tarmac chewing ferocity of Crystal Castles, it falls particularly flat.
The debate over headliners Sigur Rós had raged at the festival through Friday and Saturday,
and continued even into extended discussions in the comedy and literature tents the next day. Was
their set one of transcending splendour - one reaching highs that no member of the crowd, even those
taking copious hallucinogens, had ever experienced? Or was it boring, slow moving music for polar
bears, sung in elvish by a man with half a bird sticking out of his collar?
Or maybe it was just astonishing. A packed crowd witnessed something that will
be talked about in hushed tones at festivals for years to come. Gorgeous, glacial, euphoric... the
hyperbolic list goes on. Sigur Rós threw everything at this performance, and every bit
stuck. Marching bands dressed in white. Glitter cannons. Giant glowing orbs. Icelandic between song
banter. And the noise - a blitzkrieg of beauty washing over the audience in waves, from the opening
Svefn-G-Englar's echoing whale noises through to Hoppipolla soaring violins, this was a concert that
used the audience's heartstrings as bungee ropes. At the centre was the angelus-voiced Jónsi
Birgisson, giving a masterclass in how to headline a festival, even without a single singalong
chorus.
Certainly one of the most exclusive gigs of the weekend, as huge queues snaked round the Music and Film
tent, was legendary punk band Buzzcocks playing a face-melting gig at 2am as part of Mark
Lamarr's presentation of an evening with 'God's Jukebox'.
Pete Shelley's punk rockers turned in a set so boyishly enthusiastic that you'd have sworn they
should be playing the new bands tent. It's a mark of how every song is so embedded in the
consciousness of the crowd that every song is greeted with the same rapture as Ever Fallen In Love?.
No mistake, this is a perfect gee up for a night dancing in the trees. Right -
minimalist techno, anyone? To the woods!
Back...
Latitude 2008:
Day 1 |
Day 3
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