11

SATURDAY

At times it seems that 90 percent of today’s indie rock is filtered through the Vaseline-smeared lens of the Velvet Underground. Primal drumming, droning guitars, and the occasional drug reference put Arlington duo (John Masters and Aidan Coughlan) Metropolitan squarely in that majority. The band’s garagey debut, Side Effects, on local label Crank Automotive, features 13 songs that bow at the feet of Lou Reed and fellow proto-punk Jonathan Richman. The disc’s liner notes call Masters and Coughlan “screamers of silence, bathers of dirt, soul-caves,” but they sound like two guys with a serious New York New Wave fixation to me. If a young band is going to worship fellow musicians, I guess it might as well be Reed and Richman rather as, say, John Tesh. See Metropolitan get suburban with Gist at 9 p.m. at the Galaxy Hut, 2711 Wilson Blvd., Arlington. Free. (703) 525-8646. (Christopher Porter)