Scale and amazing drainage, that's what Latitude has going for it. Well, that and being just a couple of miles from the Suffolk seaside. It's a compact performance arena with only the Sunrise stage taking more than 60 seconds to walk to and 'only' 25,000 folks in your way. And though there's all the comedy, spoken word and experimental film & theatre you can handle, for this blog it's still mostly about the music, which was...
...patchy. Didn't much care for the big-stage headliners (Pet Shop Boys, Nick Cave, Grace Jones); a huge crowd over-indulged Thom Yorke's sleepy Sunday noon set; 'hot' NME darling-types like 1990s and Airborne Toxic Event exposed their dispiriting conformity to the sorts of sounds guitar bands have been making for the past five years or more. But full sets which did register in some way or other included:

:: the rumble and swoop of drum & vocal Swedish duo Wildbirds & Peacedrums, exactly what the doctor ordered after Thom Yorke

:: the permanently back-lit and mist-cloked Danish combo Mew with their slow-burning widescreen epicness - Zookeeper's boy, that's the one, no?

:: Considering how long they been out of the game and that their stock-in-trade is good old wonky Brit indiepop, The Vaselines were, well, quite the well-oiled machine. Good Glasgae banter, to boot. Then it's a short walk into the woods for...

:: ...taut indie-funk trio The Invisible filling the same sort of spot on the Sunrise Stage as Wheat had a couple of years back. Peddling a smart line in funky pop-rock with a more nuanced sound that the anthemic thud of main stage acts like White Lies and Doves, these guys plainly had, um, chops-a-gogo but happily kept them largely in the deep-freeze...

:: Impressively undimished by time, some sterling pop primers for the kids courtesy of St Etienne on the Uncut stage and The Pretenders on the main (Kid was mildly emotional)

:: And St Vincent. Now if there was one act which represented the very acme of the Latitude musical demographic, reallyrather would nominate Sallie Clark with her smartly skewed indie and Polly Jean-lite tendencies. Some acts can make 40 minutes seem like a week; this set flew by...

Disgracefully overlooked in last week's Mercury Music Prize nomiations, some good old band machinations over at Camp Danananaykroyd with bassist Laura having recently been given the elbow: 'She was sacked because she, regardless of what she is saying now to all her devoted friends, was beginning to care so little about this band that it was literally unbearable for any of us to continue doing what we love. It had turned into a living nightmare and it was her that caused that. She was insufferable towards the end.' Excellent stuff, plenty more here...

...but she's still in the new vid promoting the glorious sprawl of Some dresses: