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And what better way to start your day than watching an avant-garde singer songwriter dressed as a
star play next to a punting lake? Seriously, don't all rush at once.
However, The Irrepressibles seemed to have covertly taken over Latitude this year - two live
performances and an afternoon of 'soundscapes' in the forest. Lucky then that they've got the
talent to go with their camp artiness. Lead singer Jaime McDermott has the voice of an angel and his
backing band, drilled to dance robotically in time with the music, gave the whole affair a wonderful
baroque air.
White Lies kicked things off on the main stage, and despite the early afternoon, bright
sunshine combination not really creating the right atmosphere for these serious looking black clad
men, their sleek, slightly operatic, poised on the brink of pretension, doom-pop-storm was pretty
fantastic. And in Unfinished Business they have a song good enough to hang a career.
It isn't on record what Sébastien Tellier would offer you to hang his career on. But the guess is it
wouldn't be printable on a family website (Know any of those? - ed).
Resplendent in shades, beard, ever-present cigarette and a selection of Gallic shrugs and disdainful
lip curls so ridiculously, stereotypically French they could have been cribbed from 'Allo,
'Allo, he managed to not let the confines of a festival shape his set in anyway shape or form,
managing just four songs before being forced off, including his Eurovision entry Divine.
It was, in some strange way, brilliant. Plus he managed the single best piece of crowd interaction
of the weekend: "You're lovely people... just so fat and ugly".
No such insatiable rudeness from The Coral. Playing a remarkably electrified acoustic set they were
reliably brilliant. You forget how perfectly formed Dreaming Of You is, how delightfully odd Simon
Diamond is and how good a festival band they are. Plus the new material they showcased sounds pretty much
like The Coral too. Which is great. La.
Now, forgive musicOMH for a second, but just what is the deal with dEUS? The Belgian rockers
drew a pretty impressive crowd to the main stage (possibly because of a lucky piece of scheduling -
they clashed with the rammed Coral tent and little else) but their performance was little to
write home about - a confusing mix of jazz, prog and heavy metal.
Roadhouse blues? Sorry Jim, it's all about Dog House blues. Seasick Steve: bona fide hobo,
cowboy, sound engineer, producer, and as he would have it, "song and dance man" and "bum". The
affable bluesman was on supreme form for his early evening set on the Obelisk stage, playing up to
and revelling in his redneck image, garnishing the giant crowd with a sweet set of blues.
Every song and instrument had its own story: the Three Stringed Trance Wonder (a "piece of shit"
three string guitar with the remaining strings in the wrong place); the Diddley Bow (the one
stringed guitar); the Mississippi Drum Machine (a small wooden box stamped on). He dedicated a song
to his dead dog and hauled a female member of the audience to perform a song that he can only do
when he "sings it to a lady". One of the best things we saw all weekend.
To go from Seasick Steve to Sky Larkin was the equivalent of tapping your boots and
smoking in the sun with a cool beer to having a cold festival fried egg lobbed at your face. The
promise displayed in their few releases was completely non existent here, and as the sun began its
slow descent, their thrashing and student-sized indie screeched and eeked out of the Lake Stage PA
with the enthusiasm of a college kid on a Monday morning.
Continues...
Latitude 2008:
Day 1 |
Day 3
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