Wednesday Happenings

Image of Yo La Tengo from Myspace.

If you feel a creaking in your bones when you realize that Ride the Tiger came out 23 years ago, join the freaking club. It's the 20th anniversary of President Yo La Tengo, and, while no member of the band has ever been elected to public office, Ira, Georgia, and James have long been superintendents of our hearts. The new record, Popular Songs, is surprisingly taut, but that won't stop us from demanding "The Story of Jazz." With Yura Yura Teikoku. Wilbur Theatre, 246 Tremont St., 8 p.m. $22.50.

Rock Music: Other

Tickets for tonight's fun. show at Great Scott sold out shortly after "Aim and Ignite," the Brooklyn band's debut, dropped late last month. For good reason, we say: the album features the Freddie Mercury-reminiscent voice of Nate Ruess (formerly of The Format) set against a lush backdrop of sophisticated and catchy pop. It's easily on our shortlist of best albums released this year. Miniature Tigers and DJ Carbo join the bill at the Allston hotspot. Great Scott, 1222 Comm. Ave., Allston, 9 p.m. sold out. More information. (VW)

Movies

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) is F.W. Murnau's great American melodrama, the tale of a Man, a Wife, and a Woman from the City and the usual themes of lust, betrayal, remorse, and redemption. Harvard Film Archive, Carpenter Center, 24 Quincy St., Cambridge, 7 p.m. Free.

Shorts

CineMental, the ongoing queer film series, presents "Slippery Mess: Short Films and Videos," a compiliation of the fringiest trans shorts around. The programmers promise "a subversive, lispy, hairy, hormone induced explosion of videos and shorts that confuse, annihilate, and open up what it means to be transgendered." Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St., Cambridge, 9:30 p.m. $10.

Victoria Welch contributed to this post.