CONCERTS
Bent Shapes Geoglyphs GoldLink
Thursday, 9 p.m.
Great Scott
1222 Comm. Ave., Allston
$10, 21+, 800-745-3000
www.ticketmaster.com
This is the record release show for local garage pop institution Bent Shapes’ latest LP, “Wolves of Want,”which weds some serious lyrics to the band’s irresistible brand of catchy indie melodicism. Topics include, as their bio puts it, “meditations on mental illness, the struggle to bring goodness into the world, and faith in humanity as a renewable resource.”
Friday, 9 p.m.
Midway Café
3496 Washington St., Jamaica Plain
$7, 21+, 617-524-9038
www.midwaycafe.com
This local band plays an instrumental mix of jazz and rock with a hypnotic drive, anchored in fractured math-funk bass parts and peppered with ambient sounds and fuzzy, Robert Fripp-like guitar runs. Sometimes it explodes into heavy riffs, but for the most part, tension is held with an intense, wide-awake focus. This is music that can stimulate your brain and move your feet.
Monday, 7 p.m.
Middle East Downstairs
480 Mass. Ave., Cambridge
$20, all ages, 866-777-8932
www.ticketweb.com
This DC rapper made waves on the web with his 2014 debut mixtape, “The God Complex,”leading to an album with the legendary Rick Rubin, “And After That, We Didn’t Talk,”released this past November. He’s been celebrated both for his speedy rap skill and his diverse beats, which venture into genres like electronica and house—a sound he calls “future bounce.”
Get into Bent Shapes
VARIETY
Verses through Versus
Friday, 8 p.m.
The Record Co.
960 Mass. Ave., Boston
Free
New England Conservatory students present an off-campus concert joyfully smashing barriers between artists and art forms—music, theater spoken word, visuals—it’s all mashed together. Three highlights we’ve been given: the Renaissance lute combines with a modern loop machine, John Cage’s already abstract music is translated to painting, and, most mysteriously, two Santeria gods duke it out.
TALKS
Guy Maddin
Thursday, 5 p.m.
MIT Building 56, Rm. 114
21 Ames St., Cambridge
Free, 617-253-3599
cmsw.mit.edu/event/conversation-with-guy-maddin/
This Canadian filmmaker, whose latest, “The Forbidden Room,”has earned both praise and exasperation for its surreal narrative and gleeful mining of old school Hollywood imagery and tropes, will appear at MIT tonight in a discussion with William Uricchio. Our topic: the potential for the Internet to foster a new kind of art for a new kind of audience.
MOVIES
2016 Irish Film Festival Boston
Thursday through Sunday
Somerville Theater
55 Davis Sq., Somerville
$12-$85, info@irishfilmfestival.com
This annual fest, which remains the largest Irish-focused film festival outside Ireland, returns with over 45 fresh entries representing the best of the Emerald Isle. Among the special guests will be comedian Pat Shortt, who appears in two films: the feature “Garage” and the short comedy “Spaceman Three”. From the looks of the highlight reel, there should be something here for every taste.
Speed Sisters
Sunday, 2:30 p.m.
Museum of Fine Arts
465 Huntington Ave., Boston
$11, 800-440-6975
This documentary tells the story of the Middle East’s first all-woman street racing team. Not settling for a simple, boilerplate tale of women defying gender norms, director Amber Fares, who’ll appear for a discussion after this screening, explores both the political and the personal, highlights the character of each racer and the relationships between them.
THEATER
H.M.S. Pinafore
Through March 30
Oberon
2 Arrow St., Cambridge
$35, 617-547-8300
Chicago theater troupe the Hypocrites have found quite the niche putting an indie folk spin on the works of Gilbert and Sullivan, but, lest they be typecast, this will be their third and last. Expect invitations to audience participation, pajamas, ukuleles and some gender-flipping with the characters—hey, if it worked for “Ghostbusters,”why not Gilbert and Sullivan?
Fast Company
Through March 27
Lyric Stage Company
140 Clarendon St., Boston
$31-$65, 617-585-5678
Lyric Stage presents this play by Carla Ching, a caper about a woman named Blue and her unusual family, whose business happens to be one of the great American pastimes: con artistry. Blue’s the family outcast, but she may yet prove to be its shining star. We don’t know much else about the story, but the Lyric promises it’ll keep you guessing.
ART
High Low
Through March 29
Fort Point Arts Community
300 Summer St., Boston
Free, 617-423-4299
This show features four local artists, chosen by filmmaker and Emerson College professor John Gianvito. Soviet-born interdisciplinary artist Alexandra Borovski works with folktales; painter Alexander Clayton Johnson irreverently mixes pornography with 16th century Venetian masters; painter Nicholas Mello compares an art career to the lottery; multimedia artist Eric Stefanski approaches proverty and crime with a sense of the absurd.
Planning the Improbable, Sketching the Impossible
Through March 26
Washington St.
321 Washington St., Somerville
Free, 617-623-5315
For this show, Washington St. asked artists from across America for their most grandiose ideas—stuff they can’t actually execute for any number of reasons, but which they dream of creating. What we see are a variety of sketches and plans. The pieces remain tantalizingly in the imagination, highlighting its role in the experience of art, whether executed or not.
COMMUNITY
Cranes on the Square
Sunday, 11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Copley Square Plaza
Boston
When an event leaves the news cycle, it’s all too easy for forget it ever happened, but those still directly effected, it’s not so easy. This event commemorates the fifth anniversary of the Tsunami that hit Japan in 2011. Fold a paper crane and add it to the assembly—if you don’t know how, staff will be happy to teach you.
Drinking Liberally
Sunday, 7 p.m.
People’s Republik
878 Mass. Ave., Cambridge
Free, 21+
Are you getting lonely griping on Facebook about how the mainstream media is trying to sink Bernie Sanders? Need to vent about that one conservative co-worker who continues to smugly deny the wage gap and white privilege? You’ll find comrades at this informal political discussion group at one of Cambridge’s most Cambridge-y bars, the People’s Republik. Because solidarity goes better with booze!
DANCE
Compagnie Herve Koubi
Friday, 8 p.m.
Institute of Contemporary Art
100 Northern Ave., Boston
$40, 617-876-4275
This all-male ensemble, comprised of French-Algerian and African dancers with backgrounds in street dance, will perform their piece “Ce que le jour doit à la nuit,”French for “What the Day Owes the Night”. It mixes capoeira, pure martial arts, contemporary dance and a spirit of Sufi mysticism, encompassing both contemplative silence and athletic excitement.
COMEDY
Noel Fielding
Thursday and Friday
The Wilbur Theater
247 Tremont St., Boston
$42, 800-745-3000
Fans of this British comedian, a member of the Mighty Boosh, probably do not expect straight stand-up from him, and sure enough, his show is a mix of animation, stand-up, music and his popular characters. One typically surreal bit starts with the strange confession, “I had a dream I was a teabag,” and it only gets weirder from there on out.
