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: Sleater-Kinney at The Paradise
Here’s a fun alternative to the usual St. Patrick’s Day revelry across Boston this weekend: Sleater-Kinney are rolling into town on Sunday (March 17) to play the Paradise Rock Club, and they’re bringing January’s Little Rope with them. The iconic indie band released its eleventh studio album via Loma Vista Recordings just after the New Year, and Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein gave us a taste of the goods in the fall with a new single called “Hell.” Tucker tells the AP that this haunting new Sleater-Kinney track “[drops] us in a place and a time and a feeling and an emotion of helplessness and frustration. And revelation: Of how much control we had conceded at that present moment in time.” We understand that notion these days all too well, and it weirdly takes on a whole new vibe in the context of St. Patrick’s Day in Boston.
SLEATER-KINNEY + BLACK BELT EAGLE SCOUT :: Sunday, March 17 at The Paradise Rock Club, 967 Commonwealth Ave. in Boston, MA :: 7 p.m., 18-plus, $45 :: Event info :: Advance tickets
Comedy: Gary Gulman at The Cabot
It’s no secret we’re huge fans of Gary Gulman around here, even if we kinda always knew how the states got their abbreviations (actually we had no idea). But the Peabody native is back in action tonight (March 15), the seconds of two nights at The Cabot in Beverly. Vanyaland comedy editor Jason Greenough chatted with the comedian ahead of the gigs, and as expected, it’s a fun read. “The last time I was in Beverly at North Shore Music Theatre, I told the story of the 1980s mall wars between Liberty Tree Mall and the North Shore Shopping Center, which was a very localized civil war, and I just love telling those stories,” Gulman tells Vanyaland. “The other thing that I’m excited about is that it’s kind of a weird reunion where a lot of people I went to school with or who are from my hometown will be there, but it’s a type of controlled reunion where I get to talk for two hours and nobody can interrupt me.”
GARY GULMAN :: Friday, March 15 at Cabot Theatre, 286 Cabot St. in Beverly, MA :: 8 p.m., $47 to $86.50 :: Advance tickets
Film/TV: ‘Love Lies Bleeding’ in theaters
It’s been a minute since we were so hyped to see a new film on release weekend, but Love Lies Bleeding has been getting us worked up since Vanyaland film editor Nick Johnston previewed it ahead of Sundance. Then he reviewed it out in Utah, calling it “blood-soaked and brilliant”, and the romantic thriller film starring Kristen Stewart and the forever-underrated Jena Malone became a must-see. It finally hits theaters this weekend. Here’s the word from our Sundance preview: “One of the movies most fucked-over by the pandemic was Rose Glass’s Saint Maud, which was the kind of horror-hit that A24 normally cashes in on in the summer months that was ultimately relegated to a streaming service that practically no one subscribes to. But Glass’s talent and skill was noticed by critics and festival attendees alike, and she’s used that momentum to make what sounds to be an insane motion picture. It’s a gay love story between two women (Stewart and Katy O’Brian) that is also a pic about female body builders that is also a Las Vegas crime movie.” We’re in.
‘LOVE LIES BLEEDING’ :: Now playing in select theaters; check local listings