Latitude Festival

So, that’s Glastonbury over for another year then. It’s certainly grown since its inception forty years ago, and now seems inextricably linked to the British summer. In fact, such is the constant Glasto-evangelism in the press, you’d be forgiven for thinking that festival season 2010 had already finished. Really, it’s only just beginning; between now and the end of September, fields the length and breadth of the country will be playing host to music, art, performance, food stalls, drink and more portable toilets than you’d ever want to imagine.

All festivals have their own unique selling points, but my heart belongs to one of the relatively new kids on the block: Latitude Festival. Set in Henham Park in North Suffolk, Latitude prides itself on its diverse range of entertainment and family-friendly atmosphere. This may not set your heart racing - Woodstock it ain’t - but in the 21st Century where playing live is how the money is made, festival-going (and, indeed, festival-goers) have dramatically changed. Whereas going to a field to watch bands play used to be the refuge of the insane, it has transformed first into the kind of activity you wouldn’t be embarrassed to admit to in public, then into a kind of rite of passage for anyone with more than a handful of CDs.

There is some amount of sentiment attached to my fondness for the Latitude Festival. I grew up in the Suffolk countryside and though it can be picturesque away from the urban centres, it always seemed like a desolate cultural wasteland during my formative years. Bands always went to London, they often went to Norwich and would occasionally play gigs in nearby Colchester too, but towns in Suffolk, particularly county-town Ipswich, appeared to have been left off the map when bands planned their nationwide tours. I first ventured to Latitude in 2008 and even had the entertainment been somewhat lacking, it would have at least been a step forward for the area as far as I was concerned. Happily, Latitude proved to be a joyful collision of all different forms of entertainment in a convivial atmosphere, set away in the woods in what could almost be its own private world.

For the attendee with no tribal attachments, what sets Latitude apart from its UK peers is the sheer range of acts to see. Yes, there are music stages (four, in fact) with the level of acts you’d expect from any mid-size festival but that really is the tip of the iceberg. Latitude’s comedy tent boasts an impressive line-up throughout its three days, as does the poetry arena, the cabaret arena and the theatre arena, which this year has more than one performance from the Royal Shakespeare Company.

If this all sounds a bit middle-class, that’s probably because it is - not for nothing has it occasionally been dubbed “Latte-tude”. Radio 4 have broadcast from the festival before, and this year for the first time, the second stage is to be curated by The Word, described as “the thinking person’s music magazine”. This continues an impressive trend; Latitude may have been small when it began (Stephen Fretwell fourth on the main stage, anyone?) but in the year of its fifth anniversary, it can attract some of the biggest names in popular music, such as woman-of-the-moment, Florence and the Machine.

So, you can keep your Glastonbury with a population the size of Leicester (half of whom seem to be waving giant flags) and I’m fine for T in the Park, thanks. To be honest, I don’t fancy a trip to the Isle of Wight or Reading and Download isn’t my scene. I’ve my reservations about Summer Sundae and I’ll be giving Hop Farm a miss if it’s all the same with you. The most enticing place to be this summer is the fields of Suffolk with a pint of lager and the sun (hopefully) on your back. That’s where you’ll find me anyway, whether I’m in the front row for Belle and Sebastian, laughing to the sarcastic monologues of Rich Hall, watching Mark Lamarr’s radio show with Geno Washington or thinking up new and inventive ways to smuggle one of the numerous pink sheep out of the site. While the number of festivals is apparently increasing exponentially year on year, it takes something special to stand out from the crowd. You could do far worse with your summer than take a trip to the East of England and join the Latitude crowd.

Field Music Interview

In case you haven’t yet heard it, Field Music’s latest album is really rather good. It’s called Field Music (Measure) and has been gathering critical acclaim throughout the music press since its release. The double album has given the band a deserved rise in attention; a far cry from 2007 when Field Music announced they were going on hiatus.

In fact, Field Music have been a going concern as far back as 2004. Formed in Sunderland around the core of the Brewis brothers David and Peter, they soon gained a loyal following and a great reputation on the live circuit. I’ve been a Field Music fan since seeing them in a sweaty, underground club in Bath around four years ago. There were probably no more than 150 people in attendance, the stage was barely big enough to fit the band on, but they gave an energetic performance, packed with catchy tunes that made you dance whether you wanted to or not.

In advance of a busy festival season, I emailed David Brewis to talk arena gigs, the Sunderland scene, and sacred choral music.

First off, congratulations on making such a great album. In this age of single-track downloads and short attention spans, what made you decide to make a double album?

Wilfulness, I suppose! No, but seriously, we make music for people who listen to music the way we do and I like albums and I've got a decent attention span. Listening to a record for me is like immersing myself in their universe. Choosing single tracks is like using someone else's songs to describe your own universe. Mostly, I prefer the first option.

Your latest album, Measure, sounds to be a step away from the post-punk style you were known for, was that a conscious decision?

Were we ever known for a post-punk style? On the first two albums, the playing was very restrained and minimal, partly as a conceptual choice and partly through embarrassment at what we saw as rock and roll affectation. This time round we'd been listening to more Queen and more Led Zeppelin - we went back to a lot of the music we loved as kids - and weren't afraid to admit on record that we love rock music.

Are you pleased with the reception the new album has received?

Yeah - there have been some very nice reviews and most of the less-good reviews have basically said, "it's too long". Well, obviously it's too long - but that was part of the point - if someone wants to make their own “Best of Field Music (Measure)”, then that's a pretty easy task to accomplish - I certainly don't expect everyone to like all of it all of the time.

What inspires you to write?

Anger, stress, hopefulness, musical jealousy.

Measure is varied, experimental and full of influences. If you could only listen to three artists ever again, who would they be and why?

The Beatles are a bit of cheat, aren't they, but I'll have them anyway because they made so many great albums. And Dylan is another cheat, but again, how many artists have made 6 or 7 albums of such astounding quality? And sticking to the theme of towering artists with incredible back-catalogues, I'll go with Bowie as number 3. I think between those three I could probably spend a lifetime and not get bored and still discover new aspects to their records which I hadn't noticed before and could still probably keep dosed up on musical and lyrical inspiration. Maybe I'll try it.

A few years ago, yourselves, The Futureheads and Maximo Park all came to prominence around the same time. What do you think it is about Sunderland and the North East that caused such a creative scene?

If you look at all of the people involved in the splurge of record released by Sunderland bands over the past ten years (us, The Futureheads, This Ain't Vegas, Golden Virgins/Lucas Renney, Frankie & The Heartstrings, J Xaverre/George Washington Brown, along with someone like James McMahon who encouraged and cajoled and put on gigs), there aren't actually that many people involved. We've been blessed with coincidences and chance meetings - me and Peter meeting Barry Hyde at a youth music project back in 1996 or This Ain't Vegas actually having a whole bunch of music-loving mates from school who formed the basis of an audience for all of us, when our own mates weren't really into gigs, and who then formed bands of their own. The added factor in Sunderland is that there is no music industry here at all and we're quite isolated - none of us formed a band with any expectations other than making some interesting music and putting on some interesting gigs to amuse our friends.

Do you regret turning down the opportunity to go on tour with Snow Patrol?

Not at all. We wouldn't have come across very well on those huge stages to those massive and (for a support band) very passive audiences. It would have been a very dispiriting experience, as support tours often are, but on a grander scale! On the other hand, I'm impressed at the effort Snow Patrol have put in recently to try to lead their audiences to other areas of their back catalogue by playing songs from their first 'indie'-er album and the Reindeer Section stuff.

You’re playing a lot of festivals this summer, which one are you most looking forward to and what can the crowds expect from your shows?

Green Man is a really good festival - the kind of festival I'd go to as a punter. We're also looking forward to Glastonbury because none of us have ever been before. Mostly, we'll be doing our 'hits' set I imagine, but with extra weird guitar noises and then for Camp Bestival we're planning to get dressed up - hopefully we won't chicken out of it.

You’re pretty prolific writers, are there any plans for a new album in the pipeline?

We're nowhere near as prolific as we'd like to be. We've both got ideas for the next record or batch of records but as of the present time, I've only written half a song since we finished the last one, so I've got a lot of work to do. Eventually I might have some time off and actually be able to get down to it.

Do you get much correspondence from people confused with fieldmusic.co.uk asking for sacred choral music?

Not that I can remember though I have had someone trying to apply to [Field Music side-project] the School of Language. Poor guy.

The Family Jewels

Marina and the Diamonds - The Family Jewels

released 22 February 2010 on 679

In pop music, the best artists are the ones that keep it fun and hold your attention. It’s a worthy tradition that arguably reached its zenith in the 1980s, where Adam Ant, ABC and Madness amongst others did their bit to keep the charts boredom-free. A succession of over-earnest boy bands, talent show alumni and shadowy svengali seem intent on sucking the enjoyment out of pop culture but it looks like Marina Diamandis - better known as Marina and the Diamonds - follows the twin manifesto of pop music: fun and entertaining.

Marina has received a lot of publicity in the UK (she came second in the influential BBC Sound of 2010 poll) and looks set to ride the recent wave of female success, led by fellow solo-artist-and-not-actually-a-band Florence and the Machine. She’s not exactly green around the gills though; after more than one failed attempt at making it in bands and musicals, Diamandis decided to go it alone.

This means that her rise from obscurity to first album proper has involved determination and hard work and my word, doesn’t she want you to know it? The main lyrical themes of The Family Jewels are Marina, Marina and a little more Marina. Although a lyrically solipsistic singer is hardly an anomaly in music, Diamandis is more self-involved than most. She often refers to herself in the third person in song, throws in irritating vocal affectations and can even change from one accent to another in the same track. There are shades of several idiosyncratic chanteuses in the sound Diamandis creates - Kate Bush and Björk being the most obvious reference points - but she primarily comes across as Amanda Palmer’s immature, attention-demanding kid sister.

One theory which could potentially have legs as to why Diamandis is so keen to hog the spotlight is that the accompanying music and arrangements are so pedestrian that she uses her voice to disguise the record‘s shortcomings. If, as we’re told, this is the sound of the future, it’s slightly concerning that it appears to be a sanitised version of La Roux’s brittle, fractured synths. Unfortunately, her constant insistence on being so ham-fistedly quirky and zany soon becomes wearing, and simultaneously rescues and spoils the whole album. Consider Hermit the Frog: a perfectly adequate song until Diamandis decides to start howling like a coyote and blathering on about frogs, and The Outsider is a listenable ballad (albeit one which sounds like it was written with fans of Twilight films in mind) ruined by a throaty growl of “I’m a fucking WILDCARD!”.

A wildcard Diamandis is patently not. As much as she’d like us to believe she’s some kind of individualistic trail-blazer, The Family Jewels is little more than an updated version of Pink’s teenage-angst-filled album, Missundaztood. Peel away the layers of the 80s-inspired backing tracks, get rid of the histrionics and scrutinise the lyrics, and it’s all style over substance. Syncopated piano chords, bouncy bass and sing-song melodies give the impression that it’s on the verge of morphing into the kind of music you’d hear in a big top. Thankfully it never does, but a custard pie-wielding clown and a swanee whistle always loom ominously on the horizon.

Counter-intuitively, it’s when Diamandis really lets go and turns the crazy up to eleven that The Family Jewels is best. Opener Are You Satisfied? has crunching guitars and a genuinely thrilling build-up to the chorus, and Hollywood is an astute and perceptive tale of the fame game. On the latter, Diamandis sings of air-headed stewardesses filling in “gossip magazine crosswords” whilst admitting herself that she’s“obsessed with the mess that’s America”. Upon arrival at JFK she’s met by an ersatz promoter who exclaims “Oh my God! You look just like Shakira! No, no, you’re Catherine Zeta”, before the killer line is deftly tossed out by our heroine: “actually, my name’s Marina”.

Best of all is the fantastic Oh No where Diamandis brattishly exclaims “Don’t want cash, don’t want cards, want it fast, want it hard” and, rather brilliantly and with otherwise hidden self-awareness, “I’m now becoming my own self-fulfilled prophesy” before a towering end to the chorus which could crumble masonry.

It seems these are the exceptions rather than the rules, sadly. Girls strives for eroticism and female empowerment, but the searing insight that, with image-obsessed girls, “all they say is na na na na nah” is not as acerbic as it could be. This failing is symptomatic of The Family Jewels as a whole; although it has its moments, and Diamandis is clearly a talent, it’s nowhere near as clever, cutting and unique as it thinks it is. If it’s fast-paced, witty, modern, in-your-face pop you’re after, try investigating Little Jackie and their vastly underrated 2008 album, The Stoop. On final track, Guilty, Diamandis purrs “I’m a troubled one”and proclaims she’s “guilty on the run”, when in reality, she’s only guilty of is falsely raising expectations with her brash approach and letting herself down. Marina and the Diamonds may well stick to the twin virtues of pop but maybe it’s time to add a third golden rule: don’t be so bloody annoying.