Thursday to Sunday: Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend
The 40th annual Centaur Motorcycle Club’s Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend commences on Thursday night with BOOTCAMP, the opening party of a brand-new venue: Soundstage DC. If you’re trying to understand the vibe of the famed weekend, look no further than the official event titles: Beyond BOOTCAMP, there’s UNCUT XL, UNHINGED, PERVERT XXL, UNHOLY, and LUST. Saturday’s main event—PERVERT—will feature a performance by drag superstar Gigi Goode of RuPaul’s Drag Race season 12 fame. The weekend is a testament to the longevity and range of the region’s leather and fetish community and gives back to LGBTQIA nonprofits each year. Last year’s MAL Weekend raised more than $90,000. The official events will be hosted at venues across the city, including Bunker and Culture. What’s more, MAL will likely offer an exciting taste of what’s to come when the city transforms for WorldPride this June. Remember, MAL Weekend is a marathon, not a sprint! Review all of the weekend’s events and pace yourself to best appreciate all the leather fun has to offer. A full schedule of official MAL Weekend events can be found at leatherweekend.com. And at least one unofficial party also stands out: Cruise Control—A Leather Dykes Party with DJs Chelle and xXabiXx at DC9 on Saturday. MAL Weekend kicks off at 10 p.m. on Jan. 9 at Soundstage, 901 Wharf St. SW and runs through Sunday. kineticpresents.com. $99–$219 for weekend passes; individual tickets available. —Serena Zets
Friday: Been Stellar at Songbyrd
Been Stellar; courtesy of Songbyrd
Don’t let the title of Been Stellar’s recent record, Scream from New York, NY, deter you from seeing them live in Washington, D.C. This is a self-styled angsty New York rock band whose enrapturing urgency will nonetheless translate anywhere. Another misdirect: The fact that their 2024 full-length is technically a debut album, since the hard-hustling quintet have already released more than seven years’ worth of music—dating back to their college days at New York University—and toured with the 1975 and Shame and opened for Interpol and Fontaines D.C. just a few months ago at the 9:30 Club. Pitchfork called them “an ubiquitous and ambitious presence in the downtown music scene.” Plenty of critics have posited the Strokes as an ancestor, but as vocalist and lead songwriter Sam Slocum told Clash in June, “A guy wearing a jacket onstage in front of four other guys playing guitars and they’re from New York = Julian Casablancas.” Indeed, this is a band that bleeds far more than the icy Manhattan boys who reigned over the early aughts. Slocum, who cited writer, artist, and filmmaker Miranda July as a source of inspiration in that same interview, pens lyrics with novelistic specificity and an inchoate restlessness that raises the stakes of the whole endeavor. They’re worth catching now, for the price of lunch, before the secret gets out beyond the Northeast corridor. Been Stellar play at 8 p.m. on Jan. 10 at Songbyrd, 540 Penn St. NE. $20. songbyrddc.com. —Amelia Roth-Dishy
Closing Saturday: Intersections at the Mansion at Strathmore
Jordann Wine’s “Spiral”
The Mansion at Strathmore frequently makes good use of the historic house as a backdrop for unconventional art, and an exhibit pairing local artists Rashad Ali Muhammad and Jordann Wine makes for an especially eye-popping display in the old-school setting. Both artists use materials that could be derided as “crafty” were they not configured in such atypical and interesting ways: Muhammad liberally uses the petals of artificial flowers as well as some costume jewelry embellishments, and Wine uses heaps of glitter. One room of the exhibit features clear jars full of these materials, in a rainbow display worthy of a candy store. The pair share a penchant for patterns that suggest the infinite, and especially circles, which are the shape of many of their canvases. Muhammad’s petals are sometimes geometric reverberations, and sometimes swirl into topographies or landscapes, both on their own and as the ground for figures adorned with painted and collaged masks. The collaged elements both adorn their portrait subjects and absorb them into their lush, fantastical backgrounds. Wine’s impeccable glitter formations are reminiscent of sand paintings, and draw from sacred geometry, the golden ratio, and tessellations, in addition to sometimes depicting black holes and other trippy mathematical adventures. The two artists complement each other throughout the gallery, and even collaborated on a massive work showing concentric circles composed of both of their signature materials radiating outward in a seemingly endless undulation. Intersections runs through Jan. 11 at the Mansion at Strathmore, 10701 Rockville Pike, Rockville. Tuesday through Friday, noon to 4 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. strathmore.org. Free. —Stephanie Rudig
Saturday: Ex Pilots at Quarry House Tavern
Ex Pilots; courtesy of Quarry House Tavern
Few guitar-based records sound as good as Ex Pilots’ most recent release. Their 2024 album, Motel Cable, dips its toes in multiple rock-based subgenres. The unifying tie is the damn near perfect mix. Handled by the band’s vocalist, guitarist, drummer, bassist, and keyboardist Ethan Oliva (believe it or not, Ex Pilots aren’t a solo project, it’s a six-piece), the 15 songs on this record are a fantastic showcase of a guitar’s versatility. The band isn’t exactly a shoegaze act but the shoegaze influence is evident on tracks like “Hannah” and “Motel.” The six-strings are mixed to perfection, a feat considering I’ve been enjoying their music on headphones via a streaming service rather than on vinyl attached to a massive stereo. And it’s not all doom and gloom. “Silver Sword” swings for the power-pop fences with a Matthew Sweet Girlfriend meets Nada Surf vibe on Let Go. “At The Side” is a somewhat straight-ahead rocker in the same vein as Jimmy Eat World transitioning from Clarity to Bleed American, while “Dog in the Yard” is reminiscent of all the great one-hit wonder rockers from the late ’90s like Hum and Failure. Check out this Pittsburgh-based act in one of the DMV’s best burger, beer, and whiskey bars. The basement venue is often overlooked and it’s a shame because their programming is just as good as their burgers. Ex Pilots play at 9:30 p.m. on Jan. 11 at Quarry House Tavern, 8401 Georgia Ave., Silver Spring. quarryhousetavern.com. $19.84. —Brandon Wetherbee
Ongoing: Marisa Stratton: You Will Never Be Forgotten at the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington
A view of the exhibit; courtesy of Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington
Plenty of contemporary artists like to play around with capturing an increasingly digital world, imbuing painting with the digital artifacts that surround us online, often with the purpose of highlighting internet-induced isolation. Painter Marisa Stratton instead strips away pixels to find the essence of a person, using screen grabs from TikTok or video calls as the reference point for a huge array of portraits that are lovingly rendered. The artist also toys with screen dimension and canvas size, with pieces that are as wide as a phone screen and as tall as the room, showing TikTok windows stacked atop each other in a witty illustration of “infinite scroll.” A behind-the-scenes TikTok by Stratton shows how one of these strips was drawn, down to the app icons and collapsed comments sections. There are also kinetic sculptures in the mix, including a continuously turning wheel whose interior is covered in still more portraits of digital windows, a sly representation of being stuck in a loop, or possibly looped in. Throughout the two rooms and entryway that the gallery occupies, putty or plaster has been applied to the walls, in some places spelling out titles in loopy cursive like cake icing, and in others serving as a coating that obscures the cords that charge video tablet displays. The overall exhibit is resolutely analog, taking delight in the physicality of these artworks and objects, refusing to allow digital ephemera to float away or its creators to fade into anonymity. Marisa Stratton: You Will Never Be Forgotten runs through Jan. 26 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington, 3550 Wilson Blvd., Arlington. Wednesday through Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. mocaarlington.org. Free. —Stephanie Rudig
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