Comedian Mike Birbiglia performing at the Shadow of the City Festival at The Stone Pony Summer Stage in Asbury Park, NJ on Friday, June 28, 2025.

Ten years ago, Shadow of the City launched in Asbury Park, establishing a new boutique rock, pop and punk festival, curated by New Jersey singer-songwriter and producer-to-the-stars Jack Antonoff.

Since 2015, the summer fest at the Stone Pony Summer Stage has become an anchor for Antonoff’s ascendant pop-rock band Bleachers — a homecoming destination where the six-piece group can always roll in and blast their wall of guitars, drums, horns and bells; Bleachers looks and sounds more like the E Street Band every year.

But the true magic of Shadow of the City is the flesh-and-blood community it’s fostered, the conversations in the crowd where fans swap stories about how many SOTC’s they’ve attended, their favorite moments — for all the concerts and festivals I’ve attended, no event comprises kinder or more enthusiastic supporters. Everyone is locked in, spiritually invested, feeling as though they’ve helped construct this sweaty little testament to the power of live music, year by year, song by song.

Joyce Manor performing at the Shadow of the City Festival at The Stone Pony Summer Stage in Asbury Park, NJ on Friday, June 28, 2025.

Though there was perhaps some doubt heading into 2025 — had Bleachers gotten too big for their own festival? After all, the band headlined Madison Square Garden last fall, a mammoth concert about five times the capacity of a measly asphalt parking lot at the Jersey Shore. And as Antonoff, 41, has become a studio guru — more or less synonymous with the hit-making engine that fuels Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter — would he still have time to pull this show together, especially as Bleachers is between album cycles? (They are currently writing their fifth release.)

Bleachers performing at the Shadow of the City Festival at The Stone Pony Summer Stage in Asbury Park, NJ on Friday, June 28, 2025.

But there they were Saturday night, for the seventh annual event (some years were missed due to COVID and other conflicts), boisterous and blaring, with Antonoff in his typical role, playing a sweat-soaked, wide-eyed rock ringleader swirling the mass of 4,000 fans into frenzy.

“We dream about you motherf---ers and are honored to be here tonight!” Antonoff screamed early in the hour, 45-minute set, as the band throttled through newer jams “Jesus is Dead” and “Modern Girl,” the force of dueling drum kits and saxophones sending a sonic fissure down the boardwalk and onto the sand; their own bombastic beach replenishment.

The set was bolstered by Blu DeTiger, a vision of bass guitar acrobatics and banging blonde hair, who sometimes plays with the band and trotted out for extra rumble on “All My Heroes.” The indie-rock star Claud also made an appearance, singing and strumming backup on the dreamier “Wake Me.”

Yet the most anticipated guest of the night was, now per tradition, Antonoff’s father, Rick, who emerged to chants of “Rick! Rick! Rick!” for “How Dare You Want More” and played rhythm guitar as the rest of the family stood side-stage: cousins and nephews, Antonoff’s fashion designer sister, Rachel, and his wife, actress Margaret Qualley, of “Substance” fame.

Fans watching Bleachers perform at the Shadow of the City Festival at The Stone Pony Summer Stage in Asbury Park, NJ on Friday, June 28, 2025.

Antonoff grew up in Bergen County — New Milford then Woodcliff Lake — but his family spent summers in LBI, where Antonoff and Qualley now own a home and split time between New York. The two were married at a star-studded event in Beach Haven in 2023.

Bleachers performing at the Shadow of the City Festival at The Stone Pony Summer Stage in Asbury Park, NJ on Friday, June 28, 2025.

So it seems each summer becomes a more deeply entrenched full-circle moment for the band, their fans and their shared commitment to meet up and go wild for a few hours. Antonoff urged the significance of it all in a rant that veered into dystopia and rebellion, channeling the punk heart that brought him to music as a teenager, screaming through tiny Vintage Vinyl (RIP) shows in Woodbridge.

“This is what we got, we’ve done the loop — this is the first time in recorded history that we are tired of everything new,” Antonoff said. “Nobody wants it. We want to go sit outside with friends, we want to be at shows, we want to read books, we want to make things. This is what we got. There is no microwave coming, it’s just pieces of s--- manipulating the world. … Just bored piece of s--- megalomaniacs’ version of modernity. All we want to do is burn it down and come to places like this and be together. Resist all of it.”

Dora Jar performing at the Shadow of the City Festival at The Stone Pony Summer Stage in Asbury Park, NJ on Friday, June 28, 2025.

The crowd roared, the show hurtled on with electro-pop anthems “Rollercoaster” and “I Wanna Get Better” leading dance parties across the concrete and outside the outdoor venue, as more fans looked on from the packed Watermark bar balcony across the street and sat in lawn chairs on nearby sand and grass.

Bleachers performing at the Shadow of the City Festival at The Stone Pony Summer Stage in Asbury Park, NJ on Friday, June 28, 2025.

The audience was treated to a brand-new tune, debuted Saturday, called “Blood Brothers,” featuring a banjo and climbing “woah-oh” chorus — if that’s the next single, it sounds like a winner.

It was another thunderous outing and worthy chapter in the festival’s ongoing history, amplified by the sense that all of this still feels impossible. A band that sounds like Springsteen and Simple Minds — and has never produced a single mainstream hit — has not only built a real human fanbase in 2025, but those people are willing to travel from states away and have done so for a decade.

The reality: We all desire connection, to understand and be understood. And at Shadow of the City, those ancient bonds remain unbroken.

Fans watching Bleachers performing at the Shadow of the City Festival at The Stone Pony Summer Stage in Asbury Park, NJ on Friday, June 28, 2025.

More Shadow of the City highlights

Before Bleachers, the California punk band Joyce Manor opened up the mosh pit with their barrage of riffy, pop-tinged ragers. Singer Barry Johnson dedicated the band’s song “Beach Community” to the late Brian Wilson, and urged America to “stop militarizing the police.” Otherwise it was bouncy 45-minute set, as the crowd’s rowdier section churned to the speedier tunes “Heart Tattoo” and “Big Lie.” Seagulls overhead, a sunset behind, punk-rock blazing — a very Asbury-friendly moment.

Bleachers performing at the Shadow of the City Festival at The Stone Pony Summer Stage in Asbury Park, NJ on Friday, June 28, 2025.

Comedian and Antonoff’s close friend Mike Birbiglia broke up the evening with 15 minutes of stand-up comedy, joking how a parking lot isn’t his usual scene but made the best of it with stories about his life-threatening sleepwalking disorder and how his biggest fear is being in a plane crash with his wife — arguing as they went down.

Sadly, the excellent indie-pop singer Dora Jar’s set was cut in half after delays due to sound issues. But for her 25 minutes the idiosyncratic star was all over the stage, flailing like a marionette, delivering soaring vocals on her new single “The Explorer” (Dora the Explorer, get it). By the time she was being pulled off stage the crowd wasn’t ready for her to go.