It goes without saying that having the backing of Festival Republic aids irrevocably in Benn's managing – and most pertinently maintaining – of this, the barely recognisable and both geographically and thematically distant relative of the Reading and Leeds Festivals. Moreover sporadically the festival feels more aligned with this kinfolk than it may with many a more stylistically analogous adversary (say Camp Bestival, or Secret Garden Party) as slightly excessive security checks, £10 programmes, wristbands ornamented with the autocratic tag 'Property of Festival Republic' and the marauding of teenage kicks about Henham Park's once verdant campsites tinge what is otherwise a markedly sedate sanctum of idyllic escapism. Perhaps Latitude may one day cultivate a reputation for being the one where Reading veterans wind up to writhe and wheel about prams accrued either in the interim or indeed at the 'Festival itself. God knows we've done our time down Richfield Avenue at any rate...
Less empowering although no less potent are tyrannical Danish scamps iceage who, having only released their début New Brigade in the very first week of just last year and with a combined age of somewhere around that of Omara Portuondo, ought still be teething. Or at least cutting their teeth live. Instead, they pull at ours with a playfully visceral onslaught that proffers the rudest of awakenings. An incongruous raucous, broken strings and the weekend's first and foreseeably last circle pit ensue to the sound of unrestrained, unadulterated adolescence informed by and proverbially educated at Walter Schreifels' Rival Schools. Dishevelled and crutched, Destroyer's Dan Bejar then does little to alleviate our collective sense of struggle: the site increasingly boggy (everything underfoot swiftly begins to resemble erupted Suffolk sewer), he looks as we feel following an arduous trudge through the seemingly interminable sludge. Skittering between fidgety jazz, generic I Am Kloot-infused lethargy and the sound of Broken Social Scene were the Toronto collective not collectively broken by unending melancholia, it's a drab induction into a weekend which subtly posits an '80s overload. Downtown recalls Edward Sharpe were Bejar simultaneously attracted to Wham! and magnetised by Ornette Coleman – a low – thus whilst Kaputt brought about a sense of communal unity, live it's rendered but a series of instances of isolated apathy.
With the diluvial downpours largely holding off, if The War On Drugs' squiffy noodling is a little too unearthly to fully enjoy then The Antlers' aqueous guitar shimmy and torrential harmonies enamour all over again. From the doleful languor of Putting The Dog To Sleep, to the updated Verve-indebted epics of Rolled Together or the Watson-via-Buckley suavity of I Don't Want Love, Burst Apart gets given a new lick of paint as it's again preened with a sheen of glistening charm. Drift Dive then only insinuates that acclaim ought to continue to reflect off the Brooklyn troupe for some time to come. With much of the crowd considerably leathered by this particular point in proceedings, there's never to be a more opportune moment to wheel out the gently weathered Kevin Rowland's Dexys: occupying the same sort of spot as Adam Ant this time 364 days previous, the reconvened 'Midnight Runners fortify to a degree Latitude's burgeoning reputation for rejuvenating the careers of the relatively senescent. "It's been many years since I did this song", Rowland candidly proclaims before embarking on an exhaustive Come On Eileen. Unwaveringly acceptably elongated and here established as a 10-minute wonder, it prompts an inevitable exodus once eventually over but during, by God is it good. On this retrospective commemoration of anything '80s, it stands out as the song of said decade, of the day today and does so "now I must say, more than ever."
Stumbling from this to that (namely Seye in garish pantaloons reeling off cartoon-primed pop) it'd be all too easy to disregard all contemporary pop entirely. For many, the first name to be discarded would arguably be Lizzy Grant. Or Lana Del Ray. Or Lana Del Rey. Or whatever may need to be done next – typographically or indeed surgically – to ensure the next record be shelved in supermarkets, substandard franchises, gas stations and whatnot, and not exclusively in major label depots. Whatever your impression of Ms. Grant, what cannot be denied is that her continual blurring of "the lines between the real and the fake" is utterly fascinating. Just as it took us an aeon (at least within the context of 2k12 celebrity in which every last scandalous photo sweeps the internet as though enraged cyclonic natural disaster) to work out what Gaga may actually look like, Del Rey is an enigma. A beautiful, totally manufactured thing of enigmatic beauty and every time our paths cross, or our eyes meet across a sea of smartphone screen and hysterically fluttering hands the infatuation we feel for she inflates quite incrementally.
Moreover forget anything you may have seen onscreen: this show is now suitably dramaturgical and is more so than anything staged in the nearby Theatre Arena. It's all killer and only slight filler (Summertime Sadness; Million Dollar Man; that new one Body Electric, aka that which you'd be least likely to "get down every Friday night" to) and here, despite being further removed – both physically and proverbially – from the Hollywood glitz and nonsensical glamour of her starry, stripy homeland than ever before, Del Rey appears to find peace. If with it pandemonium. For her set – although extracted from her microclimate forecast by screens and stardom – twinkles with ornate touches: her strut to the front of the stage as she croons: "Feet down fail me now" on Born To Die; the Oriental staccato strings to Without You that shadow her "China doll" allegory; that she bellows the latter from the photo pit, imbuing the track with a sense of pertinence hitherto hidden. "Tell me life is beautiful/ They think that I have it all/ I've nothing without you/ All my dreams and all the lights mean/ Nothing without you", she hollers and although the sentiment may be contorted by co-writing credits, a slight insincerity perhaps and a submission to the exemplum of money not being able to afford true love, this is Del Rey hacking out pieces of heart as she not so much vies as pleads for genuine affection. Thus startling as it may be, honesty seems to befit Grant – if not the brand that Lana Del Rey was always intended as. Of course this intangible persona allowing cigarettes to glamourously buzz about her beehive without ever being smoked is about as authentic as any outspoken Yank in any one of her lambasted Video Games, but Del Rey ought to be regarded (and in crazed cases revered) as a hunk of actor may be. Lord knows it's easy enough to fantasise sordid things given the ineradicable smut now forever incarnated in prohibitive LP format...
It's been real in at least one respect, and I certainly shan't forget this show in a hurry. Instead, I'll forever remember this particular Friday 13th as the day upon which Lana Del Rey transcended popstar status to ascend toward cultural phenomenon. All singles, miniskirts and smartphones, LDR embodies this age of immediacy; of uncertainty; of creative confusion maybe and whoever it is that may be directing her every choreographed move can comprehend this as she – and debatably we could never hope so to do. She is but a virtual reality; a piece in an elaborate 'Game of our manufacture, and she and they are playing us exquisitely. "I just wanted you to know/ That baby you're the best" goes her crackling voice one final time and once more to attach these rich, bad boy-inspired narratives to perceptible circumstance it's an attitude we'd reflect were even our thoughts not drowned out by feverish uproar.
And a joyous upward amble it is too: from the disjointed proto-disco schtick of Reagan's Skeleton to fluid reconstructions of O.N.E. and Madder Red, with lyrics effectively minimised they allow each track to build musically; monumentally to the extent of being cut off prior to airing the setlisted although today illusive Ambling Alp. The effect is a vivid one centred around emotivity and never is this condensed down more compellingly than on the future ethnics of 2080. "I can't sleep when I think about the times we're livin' in", Keating disparagingly concedes as our evening is irreversibly and infinitely enhanced by that robust bass line. You sense he shan't be clinging to that butt for posterity's sake, as he instead has plausibly the best pop songs of the weekend at his disposal: in blurring both avant-garde and '80s electro propensities, Yeasayer have effortlessly managed to retain both creativity and credibility, and although the reliance on that forthcoming release may be a case of too much of a good thing to a point, it's the likes of Longevity and beyond that'll incontrovertibly preserve just that. In this here field of 30,000, Yeasayer inhabit a metaphorical field of one where their idiosyncratic yet accessible stylings caper among vibrant pigments, miniature cymbals and paradisal perspectives.
Josh Holliday.
