BOX OFFICE BEATS
Amid the harrowing thunderstorms and beautiful sunshine, the acts at this year’s Latitude Festival delivered cinematic sets to suit an eclectic crowd, says Alexandra Pollard
★★★★☆
“It’s starting to rain,” announce Houston group Khruangbin as the heavens open at Latitude Festival. “If we know anything about British people, it’s that that won’t put you off.” Nearby, hip-hop artist Loyle Carner is lobbing around a Nerf ball to the strains of Khruangbin’s psychedelic world music, his game interrupted by a steady stream of fans asking for selfies. Later, the south Londoner will bring his personal, poetic second album Not Waving, but Drowning to the same stage.
Set over sprawling Suffolk fields in the height of summer, Latitude is a perennially pleasant festival, rain or shine. And there is a discombobulating mix of the two this weekend – bursts of searing sun give way to such severe thunderstorms that stages have to be temporarily closed. Minutes later, the sun is back in business.
Those acts performing in the tents benefit the most from this ambivalent weather – smaller ones, like northern Irish folk band Lonesome George, whose performances throughout the weekend are never busier than during a deluge, and those in the bigger tents, such as Jenny Lewis, who nonchalantly provides one of the best sets of the weekend. Dressed in a sequinned gown and matching sunglasses, the former Rilo Kiley frontwoman combines Fifties soul singer sass with rock star swagger, delicately tracing an invisible line with her finger one moment, standing on a box and throwing her arms up in the air the next. “I wrote that for a friend who went off of his medicine,” she smirks after “Do Si Do”, from her brilliant fourth album On the Line. “Not a good idea.”
George Ezra is a fittingly affable first night headliner, reeling off his baritone barbecue bops on a stage made up to resemble a living room. “Ladies and gentlemen, I invite you to dance,” he says ahead of “Blame It on Me”, a picture of politeness. And dance they do.
Del Rey has the potent but passive charisma of an old Hollywood film star
But what a strange headliner Lana Del Rey turns out to be – not so much because of her performance as how she seems to divide the crowd. Everywhere but at the very front, it is perhaps the sparsest, most indifferent audience I have ever seen for a festival headliner (I can’t vouch for second night headliners Stereophonics, because I was dancing at the Disco Shed instead). But head further in and it is by far the loudest.
Del Rey, who has the potent but passive charisma of an old Hollywood film star, inspires an almost cult-like reverence from those who have stood at the barrier all day clutching Born to Die records. It is to these fans that the 34-year-old is performing. Flanked by palm trees, she opens with that album’s woozy title track, changing the line “let me kiss you hard in the pouring rain” to something more X-rated. During “Blue Jeans”, she steps off the stage and into the crowd, spending what feels like an age signing vinyl and magazines, taking selfies (one male fan decides to plant a sudden kiss on her cheek, to disapproving murmurs from the crowd) and accepting gifts. Those she touches almost faint in ecstasy. “I’ve got The Great Gatsby and Sylvia Plath,” she announces of her gifts when she’s back on the stage, with convincing enthusiasm.
Del Rey is an enthralling presence. Written off seven years ago – after an extremely shaky Saturday Night Live performance – as a flash in the pan, she has more than proven herself by now. There is staying power in her languid, out-of-its-time Americana, and tonight she performs it with glamour and conviction. Her voice – soft and breathy, more purr than powerhouse – fills the air like smoke in an old saloon bar.
But by the end, the climactic confetti falls on to a crowd who have long since disappeared. It’s the last night, I suppose. Maybe they’re getting ahead of the traffic.