Four Nights, One Field: The Waterfront's Wildest Week Is Here

Clear your calendar and charge your dancing shoes, because the single best stretch of the Burlington summer lands this week. From Thursday, July 30 through Sunday, August 2, Higher Ground's Waterfront Concert Series takes over the general-admission field at Waterfront Park for four straight nights, each one a different flavor of great, all of them under the same lake-and-Adirondacks sunset that makes this the prettiest concert setting in New England.

Here's the run of show. Thursday, July 30 — Thundercat, Stephen Bruner's bass-genius fusion of funk, jazz and everything in orbit, the kind of set where you go in a casual fan and come out telling strangers about six-string bass technique. Friday, July 31 — Sylvan Esso, with Landlady opening; Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn's electro-pop is engineered for exactly this — dusk, a field, a few thousand people moving as one. Saturday, August 1 — The Head and the Heart, with Houndmouth, rolling through on the "Every Shade of Blue" tour, delivering the big-hearted sing-along folk-rock that turns a lawn into a choir. And Sunday, August 2 — Big Thief, closing the run with the most quietly devastating band of the bunch — Adrianne Lenker's songs land somewhere between a whisper and a gut-punch, and hearing them over open water at last light is going to wreck people in the best way.

Why it matters: this is the spine of Burlington's whole summer. In a year when the indoor clubs are comparatively quiet and two historic downtown rooms are gone, the Waterfront series is where the city does big, communal, national-act live music — and it does it with a backdrop money can't buy. Four nights, four distinct rooms-without-walls, one field on Lake Champlain.

A word to the wise on the practicals. This is an outdoor general-admission field, so the usual lake rules apply: layers, because the breeze turns cold the second the sun drops behind the Adirondacks, and comfortable shoes, because you're standing on grass for hours. Set times and gate policies vary by night. If you can only make one, choose by temperament: Thundercat and Sylvan Esso for the dancers, Head and the Heart for the singers, Big Thief for whoever in your life needs a good cry with a lake view.

Or, and this is the correct answer, go to all four. Summers this good don't come around often, and this one's got a sunset built in.

Sources: Thundercat — Waterfront Park (JamBase); Sylvan Esso — Waterfront Park (JamBase); The Head and the Heart — Waterfront Park (JamBase); Big Thief — Waterfront Park (JamBase); Higher Ground events