Editor’s Note: Welcome to V3 Weekend, Vanyaland‘s guide to help you sort out your weekend entertainment with curated selections and recommendations across our three pillars of Music, Comedy, and Film/TV. It’s what you should know about, where you need to be, and where you’ll be going, with us riding shotgun along the way.
Music: Bishop Briggs at The Paradise Rock Club
It’s been a minute since we last caught up with Bishop Briggs, but the alt artist and vocal powerhouse is back in our lives and playlists in a loud way with maybe the best album title of 2024 in Tell My Therapist I’m Fine. The record dropped in October alongside single and video “My Serotonin,” and now a tour of the same name hits the Paradise Rock Club in Boston on Saturday (March 29). “It has been five years since I released an album and I don’t think I could’ve ever stomached what has happened since then,” Briggs confessed when the record hit. “I wrote Tell My Therapist I’m Fine in pieces, on bits of paper, in voice notes, and alas in therapy. The music in its essence and style is an ode to the bands my sister introduced me to when we were teenagers, most of which you would’ve heard at The Warped Tour and in grungy dive bars. I can see her singing the songs with so much verve and passion — it makes me want to cry just to think about it. I made this with the hope of connection with my sister, with all of you, and perhaps most unexpectedly with myself.”
BISHOP BRIGGS + ELLISE :: Saturday, March 29 at The Paradise Rock Club, 967 Commonwealth Ave. in Boston, MA :: 7 p.m., all ages, $35 to 40 :: Event info :: Advance tickets
Music: Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats at MGM Music Hall at Fenway
We love a good flex. So we couldn’t help but notice that when Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats‘ label team of Stax/Fantasy/Concord sent out a quick press release back in the fall for new single “Call Me (Whatever You Like)”, it included some streaming links, a press photo, tour dates, and four select pull quotes. Those quotes didn’t come from press, radio, or blogs, they came from Howard Stern, Noah Kahan, Zach Bryan, and Robert Plant. That’s some heavy-hitter action. The spotlight track is the follow-up to previous single “Heartless,” listenable below, and both are included on the Americana band’s Summer ’24 album South Of Here. Now Rateliff and the dudes are out on the road showing it off, and the tour it wraps with shows tonight and Saturday (March 28 and 29) at MGM Music Hall at Fenway in Boston. “We have dreamt of playing shows like this for our entire career, to know they are actually happening feels bigger than any dream I could have had,” says Rateliff. “This tour wouldn’t be possible without you all, I feel your love so deeply. Thank you for your endless support, see you soon.” Now that’s a quote.
NATHANIEL RATELIFF & THE NIGHT SWEATS + KEVIN MORBY :: Friday, March 28 and Saturday, March 29 at MGM Music Hall at Fenway, 2 Lansdowne St. in Boston, MA :: 8 p.m., all ages, $55 to 109.50 :: Event info and tickets
Film/TV: ‘Female Perversions’ at The Brattle
We may have acted blazé the whole time it was happening, but oh, how we’d love to go back to life in the mid- to late-’90s. Music was actually interesting, the steroid era made baseball fun again, and Old Boston was alive and loud, unaware of the cultural shift lurking around the millennium corner. And perhaps most notably, the indie film scene was mind-bogglingly great. So when we catch wind of a movie from that era that previously escaped our radar, we take notice. Enter The Brattle, which tonight (March 28) serves up Female Perversions, presented by Cinématographe. Here’s the word from the Cambridge cinema: “This long-unavailable favorite of late ‘90s Brattle programming returns in a newly restored version that once-again carries the thrill of discovery. Tilda Swinton, in her first American feature, plays Eve Stephens, an ambitious lawyer who is up for a judgeship. But Eve has secrets, lots of them, and she must juggle them all while trying to maintain a demanding professional and adventurous personal life. An erotic drama that is an inspired mash-up of Hal Hartley-esque mannered indie-fare, Skinemax sleaze, and political thriller, all filtered through director Susan Streitfeld’s own unique vision.” Take us back.
‘FEMALE PERVERSIONS’ :: Friday, March 28 at The Brattle, 40 Brattle St. in Cambridge, MA :: 8:40 p.m., $15 :: Screenings and info