We’ve only just made it back, muddy wellies in hand, from Suffolk – home of the fantastic Latitude Festival. And this weekend has certainly lived up to the event's six year history - both in terms of music and in other departments too.
You see, Latitude isn’t quite like the other usual big festivals like V and Glastonbury – it’s not always about the huge names – in fact, it’s more about enjoying some of the smaller acts and getting your ears tuned into some less-known, but fantastic, artists – as well as doing some celeb spotting and seeing some other stuff like theatre and literary performances. So that is exactly what we spent the last four days doing… and don't be fooled, we were more hardcore than we sound.
Anyway, here’s how our weekend went…
Firstly, we were very excited to spot Daisy Lowe in the Range Rover tent on Saturday night. Daisy – who was looking hot in her all-in-black festival attire, including black wellies, took to the decks (see previous picture) while pal Alexa Chung joined her for the party. The pair had a good old dance and a few drinks throughout their DJ session but they headed home after just the one night – which we can’t blame them for – it was pretty muddy.
Then on Sunday we spotted the lovely Dermot O’Leary having a few pints with some pals in the guest area of the festival before heading off to see some bands. He picked a good night for it though, because leading the line up on Sunday were Suede, Hurts, Glasvegas and Eels. We like Derm and his taste in music.
The rest of the weekend was mostly spent checking out some hot up and coming acts that we can tell you all about. First up there was this hot fella – Marques Toliver. Believe us when we say his voice will blow you away. And we’re not just saying that because he lives in New York – even though, yes we do tend to develop crushes on hot men from NYC. Marques dazzled crowds in the Sunrise Arena yesterday – and even had us dancing to his tunes (and considering how hungover we were, that was never going to be an easy feat). Worth checking him out!
Paloma Faith took to the stage on Friday too despite having lost her voice before the weekend. Dressed in a right old tribal outfit, with feathers and flowers in her head-dress, Paloma bravely belted out in front of a huge crowd to the likes of Stone Cold Sober. Fabulous.
Next up, we caught 15-year-old Dionne Bromfield – god daughter to Amy Winehouse and a rising star who has just released her second album, Good For The Soul. Dionne impressed crowds on Saturday on the main stage and looked lovely in a sleeveless red denim jacket and floral playsuit (in fact she added a bit of colour to what was a very rainy and grey day – well done Dionne).
Another hottie who charmed us on Saturday was the rather attractive Ol Beach of Yellowire. With his silky hair and manly ‘tache, good ol’, er, Ol had us at ‘hello’ but then he started singing with his band on the Lake Stage which made us love him a little bit more. Yellowire has an album out on 15 August and it’s worth a listen… mainly because it’ll probably come with pics of Ol in it…
Finally an indie band where all the members are hot! Yay! Oh and the music is good too. Foster The People are from LA – which makes them sort of exotic in our minds, and although we did squeeze into the Sunrise Arena to see them late yesterday, we found it tough to concentrate on the music after we discovered just how pretty lead singer Mark was… (their new single Helena Beat is ace too by the way).
We also caught a performance by a choir – yes, an actual choir – on the main stage on Sunday afternoon (cultured? Of course we are). This choir were called Scala and they are usually made up of 200 ladies – but for space reasons, they were only 30 of them on stage for their set. If you’ve not heard them yet (and we gather from your tweets on the day a lot of you have) they basically have a knack for turning some top well-known tracks into dark, eerie and yet brilliant versions of themselves. For example, when they did Radiohead’s Creep they made us all shivery (in a good way) and their Marilyn Manson cover of Beautiful People was pretty incredible listening too. Our favourite had to be they’re version of U2's With Or Without You though. As far as girl groups go, these ladies are nothing like Girls Aloud - but they’re still amazing. Trust us.
Gorgeous Harry Potter actor Ralph Fiennes did a Q&A session on the BAFTA stage. Dressed in green wellies and a kagoul, Ralph still looked hot - despite all the rain. And he mentioned he was mighty happy at how The Deathly Hallows Part 2 had been received... we're not surprised mate!
Oh and we can’t honour Latitude 2011 without bigging up the gorgeous Paolo Nutini and his headline slot on Saturday night. Oh how we danced to the likes of New Shoes, Candy and Last Request. Paolo let slip to Absolute Radio that he's thinking about collaborating with Jay-Z after the pair met recently. HOW amazing would that be?
Oh, how we danced…
Finally, we should mention we kicked off our Latitude experience with a very proud moment on Thursday night. We watched our very own Assistant Editor, David Whitehouse, taking part in a scary literary death match in the Literature Tent. David has just published a book called Bed and he was there reading extracts from it - against three other people in fact, who had also written books. Obviously David won though and took home a fake gold medal with his name on. Hurrah! This isn't a picture of David by the way. These are just some sheep, who happened to be red and green in colour. There were some blue and purple ones too in another field. We're not sure why.
And that’s it! A music festival where we listened to live music and watched people read things rather than chase celebs – who’d have thought it, eh? We even surprise ourselves sometimes...