all photos Sam Horine

Chuck Schumer with the JellyNYC gang, Sarah Hooper and Alexander Kane. Full gallery from Sunday's first Pool Party here.

The line-up announcement for this season's slew of Jelly NYC Pool Parties wasn't quite as mercilessly drawn out as Big Boi's solo record, but it certainly felt that way. Then, after breathless internet speculation and even a leaked fake schedule was passed around as the real thing, word went out a week and a half ago that not only this year East River Park would be hosting seven free, rain or shine, Sunday-afternoon shows, but that the first Pool Party would be in merely nine days, on July 11. And so yesterday, the Williamsburg Waterfront filled up dutifully to watch Xiu Xiu and Deerhoof cover Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures, Why?, Fang Island, and a girl in a fat suit. Such familiar faces were also there, like the Fiery Furnaces' Eleanor Friedberger, Fiasco's Lucien Buscemi, and the Pool Parties very own saviour, Chuck Schumer. Our friendly neighborhood photographer Sam Horine was there, and endless gallery of shots is here, selected photos below.

Fang Island's Jason Bartell, reveling. Pics by Raymond Haddad, more below.

No offense to the other four (!!!) bands on this bill, but the full-on, Facebook-abetted lightsaber battle raging in the park at Houston and Chrystie on the Lower East Side Saturday night was a bewildering, fascinating sight. We're talking dozens of folks with LED swords (our own slideshow is here) whacking at each other, in a sportsmanlike but still real real aggressive way: "Everybody's been hitting me in the bonch," one slightly annoyed but thoroughly emotionally invested young lady announced, to no one in particular. Only in New York, etc. etc., and then it was off to the Cake Shop to find out what exactly would happen if REO Speedwagon played math rock.