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The 2009 Seaport Music Festival
This outdoor music event offers a dazzling NYC downtown harbor view
Seaport Music Festival
Of all the outdoor music events in New York City each summer, the Seaport Music Festival stands apart in several appealing ways. While not always hosting the higher profile rosters that Summerstage, Celebrate Brooklyn or the Siren Festival does, it offers a downtown harbor setting that is unique and decidedly urban with great transportation access and plenty of space to move around. And always free. If and when JellyNYC officially announces it has relocated its “Pool Parties” to the Williamsburg waterfront then the Seaport Music Festival will have competition. Until then, find your way to Fulton St. The eighth season at Pier 17 launches July 3rd with the bands Here We Go Magic and Bachelorette.
The Seaport Music Festival has the dazzling backdrop of the Brooklyn Bridge, the bluffs of Brooklyn Heights, and the lower Manhattan skyscrapers glittering all around its staging area and is tucked in between the FDR and the East River. The water taxi drops people off next to olde-timey ships and schooners, bobbing behind the stage. Beer and food is readily available and there is ample room to wander around if you’re the claustrophobic type. Unlike the Siren Festival, where the crowd is penned in like thirsty cattle. Cattle that is unable to return to its spot once they’ve located a beer outside the corral after a protracted slog through the sweaty and the shirtless.
Getting to the Seaport Music Festival is half the fun and I try to take a different mode of transportation to the pier each time out as a personal challenge. There is the M15 bus. Your bicycle. Walking across the Bridge into Manhattan. Multiple subway lines. Walking. And my personal favorite: the New York Water Taxi. Whatever you do just get down there. The bookers of this event have a way of choosing under the radar bands that end up in the national spotlight later. Past “up and comers” have included No Age, Menomena and Animal Collective. Some of the bands on this year’s docket include:
Black Moth Super Rainbow is an experimental band from Pittsburgh that sounds like the French guys from Air sitting in with the Flaming Lips. And like the MGMT breakthrough album, the new BMSR record was also produced by Dave Fridmann of Flaming Lips fame. If you are into visual effects and trippy sounds then get there for this one.
Here We Go Magic is the Brooklyn band that recently had the coveted opening slot for Grizzly Bear at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. Male and female vocals are woven into acoustic guitars and keyboards to create a hypnotically mellow vibe. Think Iron and Wine meets Last Town Chorus and you’re getting warm.
Polvo reunited for All Tomorrow’s Parties last year and it seems to be sticking. Often considered pioneers of the Math Rock movement (which they deny) the Chapel Hill noise rockers made driving, eclectic, off-kilter guitar rock on a number of indie labels throughout the 90’s. They are allegedly back in the studio recording a new album for Merge so you could be hearing a lot of new stuff at this show.
Pains of Being Pure at Heart are a New York post-punk-pop band with a bouncy handle on melancholia. With influences ranging from the Pixies to Teenage Fanclub it is buoyant shoe gaze with dreamy vocals from both Kip Berman and Peggy Wang.
The Seaport Music Festival runs Friday nights from July 3 to August 14.