UPDATE: The show has been canceled, but according to Literature’s Facebook page, a new venue is TBA.
The members of Philly band Literature grew up playing punk in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley and elsewhere, so you have to wonder if their old peers would find the mostly mannered, always Anglophiliac indie pop they’re playing now to be, well, wimpy. But as the group is quick to point out in interviews, its genre has always relied on touring hard and cheaply and subverting established systems by building your own. Yet indie pop, like punk, also has plenty of infrastructure these days, even for bands like Literature that release their own cassettes and host house shows. Chorus, the group’s 2014 debut, tweaks the jangly sophistipop of Prefab Sprout and the clamorous twee of the Field Mice; it’s the kind of record that these days usually comes out on ex-D.C. label Slumberland, and, sure enough, it did. But while so many of their reference points pivot around care and wistfulness, Literature is equally interested in forward thrust—in chug-a-chug basslines and guitars that shimmer but also serrate, as though they want to incite the world’s most bookish mosh pit. Literature performs at 7 p.m. at George Washington University, Square 80, between F and G streets and 21st and 22nd streets NW. Free. (202) 994-1000. gwu.edu.