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Pictureplane, the 26-year-old producer Travis Egedy, makes big-room music for small spaces. Tonight, touring on his clubbiest album yet, Thee Physical, he’s playing the least clubby of venues—-Subterranean A, a private residence located around the corner and down a staircase from a cluster of actual nightclubs. But there’s no irony here. Though Pictureplane runs his finger across a highly accessible library of ’90s club tunes, he embraces the dungeon. The black leather-gloved hands in Thee Physical’s artwork resurrect the dark dance music heroes of the 1980s: Liasons Dangereuses, D.A.F., Fad Gadget. On “Trancegender,” “Real is a Feeling,” and “Techno Fetish,” Egedy’s captivation with sexual ambiguity and subversion is crystal clear—albeit a little stuck in an undergrad gender studies workshop. But the real subversion is in his hodgepodge of influences: The album snacks on darkwave, drum & bass, electro, and diva-licious handbag house—convincingly and often pleasurably. Pictureplane’s touring mates Teengirl Fantasy, a couple other guys known for unearthing ’90s pop just to smack it around, make this show a giddy exercise in cruel and unusual punishment. 8:30 p.m. $10.
MUSIC
The Hellmouth reopens when teen actress Miranda Cosgrove (from iCarly) plays Wolf Trap tonight with YouTube sensation Greyson Chance. As charming as the 18-year-old can be, Cosgrove’s 2010 single “Dancing Crazy”—-penned by Avril Lavigne—-sounds like it was originally written in Japanese, translated into three other languages, and finally distilled into this pitch-adjusted English language version, a bizarre and disorienting onslaught of meaningless slogans. “I like you and you like me! We get together and we’re happy!” “Hot! Hot! Keep it comin’!” “Everybody’s ragin’, ragin’ crazy!” 7:30 p.m. at Wolf Trap Filene Center. $20-$100.
Local pop rock stars Title Tracks return to Fort Reno in a make-up date for their rained-out show a couple weeks back. Office of Future Plans and The Akoma Drummers are also on the bill. 7:15 p.m. at Fort Reno Park. Free.
Oh yeah, this is gonna back up traffic on 14th Street: Big Boi comes to the Park at 14th tonight in a concert sponsored by Crown Royal. 7 p.m. 21+. Admission price will be “based on capacity.”
Indie folk group Mountain Man is at IOTA Club & Cafe, the best cafe/bar/music venue in Clarendon. (That’s not really saying much, but it’s still a cool venue!) Take a listen to the band. 8:30 p.m. $12. Correction: This show is on Tuesday night.
FILM
Screen on the Green, duh. The well-loved summer series kicks off tonight with In the Heat of the Night. 8:30 p.m. or so on the National Mall between 8th and 14th Streets NW. Free.
BOOKS
Sally Jacobs reads from her book The Other Barack: The Bold and Reckless Life of Obama’s Father, at Politics & Prose. In a Washington Post review, David J. Garrow says Jacobs’ astonishingly well-researched book unveils some critical facts about the president’s father’s life, but “the cumulative effect of her thoroughly researched biography is deeply depressing…her richly sourced account of how a promising young adulthood quickly descended into daily alcoholic binges and serial domestic violence paints an even more dramatically downbeat portrait than did Obama’s namesake son 16 years ago in Dreams From My Father.” 7 p.m. Free.