Friday 17/07/09 Latitude Festival, Day One @ Henham Park, Suffolk

At Latitude you don’t have to worry about mud, thanks to the crazily good drainage they seem to have in Suffolk it’s kids and baby strollers that must be traversed as you criss-cross the Henham Park site between stages. This is my first Latitude and at first it is slightly off putting to see how family friendly Latitude really is compared to the teenage angst of the likes of Reading/Leeds and the all out party of Glastonbury or Bestival.

Having struggled to actually get out of London, the dreaded North Circular is our foe as ever, Gigwise finally reaches our pitch late on Friday afternoon just in time to hear Ladyhawke drifting across the site with ‘Paris Is Burning’. By the time our tent is erected we have also been serenaded into a festival mood by Of Montreal, ‘Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse’ reminding us that we are missing their amazing stage show. Cursed London roads! No cover of Daniel though, guess we’ll have to wait for Bat For Lashes to sing about us instead.

Our first real taste of the action comes in the form of SXSW breakouts Local Natives and their soaring vocal harmonies that may often be compared to Fleet Foxes but which come with a grander, soaring sonic edge. As so often with their set, ‘Airplanes’, is the standout track and worthy of the stunning surroundings of the Sunrise Arena.

We then head into the main hub of the action around the Lake Stage and Uncut Arena hoping to find Speech Debelle weaving her tales but alas we are either too late or early and instead catch the closing moments of Mew’s set which and the Danes are as epic as ever and whet the appetites completely for the band’s forthcoming album ‘No More Stories…’.

Now I’m not going to confess to being the Pet Shop Boys biggest fan but we have to hand it to them, they know how to put on a show. The set is elaborate, the performance hugely over the top and the nostalgia value absolutely immense. At one point during ‘Go West’ we are joing in with the rest of the gathered hordes singing and pointing towards the distant skies (probably east but who cares).

At the same time Bat For Lashes is packing them in at the Uncut tent, which means we can’t see a thing and this is probably our only criticism of the whole of Latitude – unless you’re in the first few rows at this particular stage you can see **** all of the goings on at the front. That doesn’t bother us though as Natasha Khan sings ‘Daniel’ especially for Gigwise (we’re adamant she wrote it for us too) and we’re happy as Larry for the rest of the night - A night spent sampling some of Latitude’s more off the wall performance art spectacles, including some cutlery doing a bank robbery, and dreaming of Grace Jones’ thunderous thighs.

Latitude Festival - Day One: