Photos: Tokyo Police Club Closes Out 2012 Lackawanna Festival

The second annual hMag Lackawanna Music Festival featured a full day of up-and-coming bands performing on Hoboken's Pier A, capped with an international headliner: Ontario, Canada's Tokyo Police Club. The rain cleared up early in the morning, leaving sunny skies and dry weather for the festival, which started around Noon.

Beautiful day for a music festival on the Hudson.

Because the Lackawanna Festival started early and ended earlier (it seems concerts in town must end by 10 p.m.), I managed to see only TPC and the previous band, Vacationer. The latter lived up to its name, performing a bright set of catchy but mellow tunes. Their Facebook page says of their album "Gone," "The eastern seaboard’s foremost relaxation specialists have teamed up to compile this unique collection of serenity-inducing sonic arrangements."

OK, Vacationer wasn't that mellow, but they definitely are influenced by surf music and fit in well with some of the current bands making pop music with a chilled-out vibe.

Vacationer (with the Empire State Building seemingly growing out of the drummer's head).

Tokyo Police Club, which said it was familiar with Hoboken from playing at Maxwell's, performed at its  biggest stage yet in the Mile Square City. Although TPC didn't have anywhere near the 15,000 people who attended the Mumford & Sons concert at the same location just two weeks before, it played before an appreciative audience.


TPC performing "Your English is Good" at the Lackawanna Festival.

Fans in the front seemed quite familiar with the band and its songs (in the front part of the crowd, at least), singing along to the set of tunes that included a number of older tunes from the Tokyo Police Club catalog. Although the advertised hour-and-a-half set really was more like 75 minutes, TPC put on a great show, and they seemed to enjoy it almost as much as the crowd did.

TPC frontman David Monks.

Graham Wright.

Guitarist Josh Hook and Monks.