Thursday: Last Wednesday at Quarry House Tavern

Most fledgling high school musicians who want to rock out find a few friends to jam with in a very accepting parents’ basement or garage and that’s about the extent of their music career. Last Wednesday, a Maryland-based rock quartet, have long graduated past the garage door, playing in music competitions, local venues and releasing their debut album, Lovesick, last year, all before they’ve finished high school. Now they’ll be opening for Bat Boy and Flowerbomb at Quarry House Tavern on Feb. 22. Composed of lead singer and bassist Lucy Cooper, rhythm guitarist Adar Weinman, lead guitarist Malcolm Cirrito, and drummer/backing vocalist Quinn Levitan, the band formed when they were just 12 years old after Weinman, Cirrito, and Levitan met through a local Bach to Rock school. Cooper was a family friend of Levitan’s who expressed interest in being a lead singer. Last Wednesday (named after the day of the week they rehearsed) was born. Determined not to have this be a mere hobby, the band started writing original material right before the pandemic, even practicing remotely during the lockdown. “I think we all made a commitment,” Cooper tells City Paper. “We’re all interested in music. We all have music forward brains. We’re making a commitment to be serious about it.” Cirrito adds, “Once we realized we could write songs that were good and that we had enough of them we figured we could actually do something with this.” The result of that commitment is a remarkable debut for a quartet so young, with influences ranging from Black Sabbath and Heart to Evanescence with Cooper’s vocal ability soaring into Pat Benatar range. “When we all realized, stylistically, where we wanted to go it just sort of clicked,” says Levitan. With three of the four members graduating in June and heading to various colleges in the fall, the future of Last Wednesday is up in the air. “I don’t know if we have a plan,” says Cooper. “A lot of this band has been figuring things out as we go.” Last Wednesday play at 8:30 p.m. on Feb. 22 at Quarry House Tavern, 8401 Georgia Ave., Silver Spring. quarryhousetavern.com. $19.84.  —Christina Smart

Friday: Rhett Miller at Miracle Theatre

No one could ever accuse Rhett Miller of resting on his laurels. Speaking from his home in Hudson Valley, New York, where the Old 97’s vocalist was taking a break from shoveling snow (“I have to be careful not to give myself a heart attack,” he says), Miller has more than enough on his plate. “I’ve got a stack of songs for the next solo record which I’m going to start working on,” he tells City Paper. “Then we’re going to be on tour a lot and I’ve got a couple of books—one book of fiction and one book of non-fiction—that I’m slowly chipping away at. I feel like a shark. If I stop swimming, I’ll die.” While fans of the Old 97’s rejoice at the news of the band’s forthcoming album, American Primitive (out April 5), they should also celebrate Miller’s brief solo tour that includes a stop at the Miracle Theatre. His last solo album, 2022’s The Misfit, was a different direction, instrumentally, for the singer-songwriter. Always wary of synthesizers and drum machines, Miller was convinced by producer and collaborator Sam Cohen that they could be used in a compelling manner. “We really talked about the David Bowie/Brian Eno album that they made in Berlin in the ’70s,” says Miller. “It’s very artistic as opposed to being a good time dance floor vibe.” Bowie happened to play a major role in Miller’s youth, putting him on his current path when a 12-year-old Miller attended Bowie’s Serious Moonlight tour in Dallas. “I saw that tour in 1983 … and it was life changing,” says Miller, who attended with Debbie Loeb and her sister, future singer-songwriter Lisa Loeb. “We sat on the side of the stage at Reunion Arena and I watched David Bowie come off before the encore and smoke a cigarette while 16,000 people chanted his name and I thought, This is a good job.” Rhett Miller plays at 8 p.m. on Feb. 23 at Miracle Theatre, 535 8th St. SE. unionstage.com $25. —Christina Smart

Sunday: Ali Sethi at the Barns of Wolf Trap  

Pakistan-born Harvard graduate Ali Sethi initially received attention for his 2009 novel, The Wish Maker, but he decided around then that he’d rather express himself through music. Sethi, who had sung Sufi devotional Qawwali songs and ghazals (lyrical poems) as a child, studied in Pakistan post-college with leading figures in those genres. But Sethi’s musical career took off in 2022 when he recorded “Pasoori,” a duet with Pakistani singer Shae Gill for the Coke Studio Pakistan TV program, which combined historical South Asian-rooted vocalizing with electronic pop and reggaeton-derived beats. It was released on YouTube as a performance and drama video and went viral with more than 700 million views. The song’s Punjabi title loosely translates to a “difficult mess” and lyrics refer to star-crossed lovers. But considering Sethi (and other Pakistani artists) were unable to work in India at the time due to political strife, many think the song, with lyrics such as “my love don’t let this distance reign,” refers to the separation between the two countries as well. In 2023, Sethi cleverly went a different musical direction with his album Intiha, recorded with Chilean American abstract ambient producer Nicolas Jaar. Using reworked programmed segments from Jaar’s 2020 largely instrumental album, Telas, Sethi shows the full range of his vocals, as he sings Urdu poetry, including some from the 19th century’s Mirza Ghalib, and some from the 20th century’s Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Allama Iqbal. Even if one doesn’t understand the languages used, or get that Sethi, the son of political dissidents, is using words in part to tell his own struggles as a gay Pakistani immigrant, one can still be wowed by his beautiful phrasing, which goes from subtle and exquisite to mournful, dramatic, and powerful. Ali Sethi at plays at 8 p.m. on Feb. 24 and 25 at the Barns of Wolf Trap, 1635 Trap Rd., Vienna. wolftrap.org. Sold out. —Steve Kiviat

Tuesday: Madi Diaz at the Atlantis 

Madi Diaz is a true heartbreaker. Based in Nashville, Diaz has opened for Waxahatchee, Angel Olsen, and Harry Styles—the latter asked Diaz to join his backing tour band and sing alongside him. On her previous record, History of a Feeling (2021), she achingly details a disintegrating relationship in an almost 12-step self-help program. In 11 tracks that have all the throbbing confessionalism of Sylvia Plath’s poetry, Diaz works through feelings of rage and resentment (on the songs with those titles), jealousy, self-doubt, and pain, and eventually closing at a chance for new beginnings. But, there’s a raw, aching beauty in her voice. Her lyrics are so personal and idiosyncratic that they speak to your own heartache and desires, too, in her sparse, indie acoustic sound. On her latest album, Weird Faith (2024), Diaz finds love. But this is no meet-cute; Diaz shows that new romance and infatuation can be just as tortuous and tangled as the most brutal of breakups. In the opening track, “Same Risk,” she talks herself through an initial sexual encounter through a series of existential pleading: “Do you think this could ruin your life?/ Cause I can see it ruining mine,” she sings. That sets the tone for this aromantic love album: vulnerable, honest, introspective, and anxiety-invoking. But in all the mirror gazing, she finds tenderness, too, even as she finds a lusher, softer, and cozier sound. Madi Diaz plays at 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 27 at the Atlantis, 2047 9th St. NW. theatlantis.com. $25. —Colleen Kennedy 

Wednesday: Saretta Morgan at Loyalty Bookstores

Poet Saretta Morgan describes her recently published book ALT-NATURE as a “love letter to the desert. One that moves with an awareness of how desires for love and belonging underwrite the violence of empire, and how the sensual experience of occupation extends and disrupts geographies and experiences of time and scale.” Witness Morgan discuss this important book for our tumultuous times, as well as the geographies it was born out of, with three D.C. poetry luminaries, Gowri Koneswaran, María Fernanda, and Fargo Nissim Tbakhi, at Loyalty Bookstore in Petworth. Born in Appalachia and raised on military installations, Morgan writes poetry that explores her relationship to place, empire, and the ongoing projects of U.S. imperialism through carceral and militaristic endeavors. ALT-NATURE uses these specific geographies to map out the roots of our feelings and experiences. Drawing from social ecologies and landscapes, Morgan’s work helps us each make sense of our place in the world through reading her exploration of such a question. I highly recommend reading her short prose, “I Feel Most Black at the Center of a Garden,” in Jewish Currents before the event to understand Morgan’s poetic ethos and way of viewing the world. It is both expansive and centered, bountiful and specific. It’s a perspective we could all benefit from reading and learning from. Saretta Morgan discusses ALT-NATURE with Gowri Koneswaran, María Fernanda, and Fargo Nissim Tbakhi at 7 p.m. on Feb. 28 at Loyalty Bookstore, 843 Upshur St. NW. loyaltybookstores.com. Free but registration is required. —Serena Zets