Latitude Festival 2023 review: ’90s nostalgia paired with an exciting future

“This is what we do for an encore”. Just the appearance of the words flashing across the backdrop of the Obelisk Stage as the sun falls on Friday night elicits a roar from the Latitude crowd. Pulp walk out to a louder ovation still, and after a mood-setting ‘I Spy’, the night explodes into life with streamers and confetti strewing the Suffolk sky to the opening riff of ‘Disco 2000’.

There is always a special, kinetic atmosphere on the first big night of a major festival like Latitude, and in Henham Park after an evening supercharged by the energy of new-gen ravers Georgia and Confidence Man, the setting could not be better for the Sheffield legends. These first shows the band have played in eleven years have been brimming with nostalgic goodwill, and as they tear through classics from their iconic ‘Different Class’, multiple generations rejoice together.

Jarvis Cocker remains one of pop’s great raconteurs, gracefully at ease and throwing chocolates out into the crowd between discussions about the difference between tall weeds and pimpernels. The musical chops of the band somehow remain underrated, too, with ‘F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E.’ writhing and grooving with the disco influences that have always run deep in the band’s DNA. Guitarist Mark Webber and keyboardist Candida Doyle channel the kind of dancing melodies that bands like Metronomy, who had delighted the main stage immediately before Pulp, have picked up and mastered in the decades since.

For a band defined by their wry, arch sense of humour, they have never feared big, bold emotion, though, and Jarvis introduces the brilliant ‘Something Changed’, a tearjerker at the best of times, by dedicating it to Steve Mackey, the long-time Pulp bassist who passed away in March this year, aged 56.

The sheer robustness of Pulp’s tunes has not faded, and likely never will, and as they tear through ‘Do You Remember the First Time?’ and ‘Babies’, the set crystallises into an expression of ecstatic joy. Jarvis leads a singalong happy birthday to new percussionist Adam Betts, and as the ending draws near, he asks, “Have we forgotten something?” A towering performance of ‘Common People’ follows, a thrilling culmination from one of the country’s most treasured and defiantly idiosyncratic bands.

No amount of rain was going to dampen Latitude’s spirits on Saturday, especially with The Lightning Seeds rekindling the ‘90s flashbacks on the main stage in the afternoon. Ian Broudie’s vintage pop penmanship – ‘Pure’, ‘The Life of Riley’, ‘Lucky You’ – is something to marvel at, and when he announces “God bless the Lionesses” following the team’s opening World Cup win, a Wembley-sized cheer rings out. The sight of middle-aged dads crowdsurfing to ‘Three Lions’ ranks among the weekend’s most indelible mental images, but any age imbalance is quickly addressed by the arrival of the relentlessly optimistic garage pop of The Big Moon, who bring a spiky, fizzing energy.

Over on the BBC Sounds Stage, Rachel Chinouriri shows what a new generation’s perspective of confident, inventive indie-pop might sound like. She may still be a year removed from releasing a debut album, but the Londoner’s songs are personal and resistant to cliché, and her charisma is spellbinding. ‘All I Ever Asked’ draws a huge ovation; much larger festival slots await.

As Paolo Nutini dishes out his mild pleasantries on the main stage on Saturday night, step into BBC Sounds and a revolution in sound is happening. Watching Young Fathers is like seeing new musical frontiers being smashed open, the Edinburgh trio and their two backing vocalists all dancing their way through an end of the world party. There is a paralysing, cacophonous excitement in the tent as they play, a set that strobes the eyeball and splits the eardrum. ‘Get Up’ is their calling card, not just designed to rouse a festival crowd, but a civil call to action.

Venture further still into the underbelly of Latitude and the lucky few hundred that arrive at the Trailer Park Stage are obliterated by the incendiary Dublin punks Gurriers. Just the latest results of the endlessly restless modern Irish guitar scene, their songs are no frills and no compromise, just pent-up, pulverising aggression that screams with historical political anger. Prepare to hear more about this lot.

For the most part, though, Latitude is the friendliest of festivals, where parents and children are more prevalent than at most other such events. Nevertheless, the same universal festival themes apply: the constant weather-based paranoia (the rain eases on Sunday, much to everybody’s delight), the rumours of major headline acts playing unannounced secret sets (Blur never showed up, naturally), the oversubscribed act that is placed too low on the bill, causing queues and overcrowding (Nell Mescal could have filled The Alcove three times over)

James, complete with orchestra and gospel choir, lift the sluggish Sunday lunchtime into a lung-busting feelgood fiesta, while Sophie Ellis-Bextor hits a soft spot with ‘Young Blood’, a song written about her mother and late stepfather. Her mother, the former Blue Peter presenter Janet Ellis, wipes away tears as she watches from the side of stage, as does Sophie, as do most of the rest of us.

George Ezra rounds out the main stage in crowdpleasing, if unimaginative, fashion, but once again it is on the BBC Sounds Stage that the real excitement happens. Black Midi’s blisteringly fast musicianship and ferocious volume ekes out the final reserves of energy from the crowd, before the eternal icon Siouxsie Sioux brings the festival curtain down with class, gracing the sizeable audience with her range of new wave classics.

Latitude has long been a firm institution in the British music calendar, and even if the booking policy can stray towards the safe zone on the main stage, exploring the smaller stages at this 2023 edition proves that the future is set to be filled with challenging, inventive new voices that are determined to push music in excitingly strange new directions.

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