Most music festivals carry at least a trace of competition, but All Things Go DC felt suspiciously free of any impulse to survive the crowd.
Women and queer folk made up much of the congregation at Merriweather Post Pavilion this past weekend, though the age range was even broader. The annual concert series has been cultivating that atmosphere by platforming gender-diverse artists year after year, but the latest DMV installment was arguably its most convincing claim to “Gaychella.” An implicit spiritual sequel to Olivia Rodrigo’s Daisy Chain Fields, it was held firmly in place by a palpable sense of collective ownership that is becoming increasingly rare at gatherings like these.
That communal warmth proved useful once the weather stopped cooperating. Friday caught a brief flush of golden-hour amber before a misty chill settled over much of the next two days, dotting the festival grounds in a constellation of raincoats. Somehow, Maryland endured the same storm system that washed ATG’s New York edition off the calendar. The rain threatened to dampen the mood every so often, but each new set stirred bodies into motion until the cold began to loosen its grip.
That process was remarkably easy, even with the Pavilion and Chrysalis stages positioned on opposite ends of the site. Each evening, they worked in tandem on a staggered schedule: while one hosted a live set, screens at the other broadcast it to those waiting for the next performer. An impressively precise system that minimized dead time without forcing fans to sacrifice one act for another, it gave the main attractions enough time to set up and start promptly as the final notes faded in the distance.
The music itself was considerably less orderly, but in the most flattering sense. Glossy pop wove through slow-burning balladry and folky grain, allowing the itinerary to swing from synthetic adrenaline to delicate ache without ever feeling disjointed.
Anyone still mistaking Slayyyter for a newcomer clearly hasn’t been paying attention, because all her years of groundwork revealed themselves with perfect clarity on the first day. The ease of her stagecraft is cut by a knowing aggression that says, “It’s about time you caught up.” Ethel Cain struck a hushed counterpoint, presiding over her parishioners with serene poise while they shrieked and supplied the chaos her music deliberately withholds.
Magdalena Bay’s already-enchanting records seemed like blueprints once their songs took physical form. A technicolor fantasy warped and shimmered behind Mica Tenenbaum as she became one with her prop box, switching from sunflower petals around her head to angel wings on her back to cartoony flames protruding from her shoulders. The whimsy still never crowded out the music, which only deepened and expanded in the flesh. By Friday’s end, the duo’s hour-long spectacle proved the hardest to shake.
Of course, Mitski didn’t surrender that easily. Closing the night with a smoldering volatility, she let the softer moments breathe long enough to carry her flock adrift before showing her teeth. That narrow space between caress and bite is where she now finds her pulse, and witnessing her move so effortlessly within it is a thrill no microphone or camera can fully capture.
Saturday initially threatened to lose that momentum when technical difficulties delayed Rebecca Black’s set, pushing the Pavilion’s schedule behind.
Thankfully, but also to no one’s surprise, the Beths quickly restored order at the other stage. The precision with which their harmonies locked together betrayed the music-school roots of the band’s founding members, but without ever calcifying into the stiffness typically associated with formal training. The rain had graduated well beyond a drizzle by then, yet when band mascot Liz Stokes sang “I wanna ride my bike in the rain,” what might otherwise have passed for miserable weather somehow found itself written into the song’s language of love and longing.
Back at the main stage, Suki Waterhouse raised the temperature considerably. All Things Go had no shortage of rockstars tearing at the rafters, but she wore the title like it was her birthright. There’s something contagious about watching a living, breathing human being occupy their body so fully that the seam between rehearsed confidence and pure instinct disappears. Although she landed each punch with full force, her live rendition of “OMG” drew its blood from that massive physicality and spilled far beyond its recorded architecture.
MUNA multiplied that energy by three as the audience continued swelling, eventually sending fists skyward from the pit to the crest of the Pavilion-facing hill during “Eastside Girls.” By the time Zara Larsson’s glitter explosion detonated across the Chrysalis Stage, the crowd for the Hayley Williams Show had already settled in across the grounds. Despite the gap, fans at the show as well as those watching on the big screen folded their voices into the chorus of “Midnight Sun” and cheered on together when the Swedish popstar brought a fan up to dance with her. For a moment there, both stages effectively became one.
At exactly 9:30 p.m., Williams and her band stepped out onto what can only be described as a wedding taking place inside a spaceship control room. Taking up every inch of free space within the white fabric draping her dense stack of equipment, she put all her toys to use to make sure no one mistook any of it for decoration.
The entire 90-minute performance moved too quickly to isolate one definitive peak, but her take on “Cinnamon” would certainly be high up on the list. Her cover of Nina Simone’s “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” also found extra weight as she planted her flag on issues that tend to invite division. Pulling away from the megaphone during “Ice in My OJ,” she chased a searing “Fuck ICE” with a matter-of-fact “Free Palestine” completely devoid of the careful hedging so common among her peers. That same bluntness resurfaced when she declared that “the greatest threat to American democracy is Christian nationalism,” a preface to “True Believer” that has become a ritual on her ongoing tour.
In her final act of uncompromising ownership of the night, she rejected calls for an encore by premeditating one to fit her time slot. Before the audience could demand one, she disappeared offstage only to return with “ENCORE” displayed in big red letters on the screen behind her as she tore through “Mirtazapine” and “Parachute.”
By Sunday, the weekend finally began showing its mileage. The lineup remained formidable, but the finish line was beginning to appear through the fog.
Father John Misty was without question the bill’s most conspicuous outlier, his arch theatricality fundamentally allergic to the emotional openness surrounding it. The contrast was useful if only because it demonstrated how coherent the rest of the weekend had been.
Thankfully, Remi Wolf set matters straight (eh?) almost immediately afterward. A last-minute addition to the lineup with only half an hour to her name, she bounced around in a bridal headpiece while using the bulk of her stage time to preview her upcoming third album. With Mud right around the corner, her abbreviated set was essentially a window into the strange new world she is building next rather than a retrospective. Five of the seven songs she played were from her new record, including the live debut of “I Won’t Cry” as well as the still-unreleased “Champagne” and “Covered in Mud.”
Her emphasis on how significant a role music plays in keeping people tethered to one another might have come off as a cliché in another setting, but at All Things Go DC, it read more like a caption for what had already been happening all weekend.
That’s what ultimately separated the festival from other gatherings with equally impressive posters. The audience never felt territorial, almost as if everyone had telepathically agreed to experience the weekend as a collective rather than splinter into camps. Just like that, strangers sharing space over a mostly soggy weekend kept discomfort from dictating the mood. The weather repeatedly threatened to swallow All Things Go, but the camaraderie coursing through the festival had already created something far more difficult to erode.
All Things Go DC 2026
