On Friday night, an ensemble of current indie-rock luminaries paid heartfelt tribute to one of their shared musical touchstones, as The Gene Clark NO OTHER Tour arrived at a sold-out 9:30 Club.

If Bruce Springsteen ever played the D.C. area on September 11, it’s not hard to imagine that the performance would entail a long, workmanlike set of earnestly anthemic music, plenty of emotional catharsis, and at least a handful of politically-engaged soliloquies between songs. For better or worse, local concert-goers were denied that spectacle this year. Instead, they got Vampire Weekend, the much-hyped indie-rock band that, coincidentally, vowed at a 2008 9:30 Club show to return with enough new material to fuel a marathon set worthy of “The Boss.”

Beach House is simply captivating live. But when their set consists mostly of tracks from their near-perfect, third full-length, Teen Dream–an album that’s sure to appear on many year-end top ten lists–perhaps excellence is nothing short of expected.

FRIDAY: >> Post-punk concept albums make us all weak in the knees, so you can bet we’ll be out for The Thermals at the Black Cat tonight. With The Big Sleep and Statehood. $12, 9 p.m. >> It’s the last weekend to check out Forum Theater and Dance’s production Kid-Simple, a “live-action radio play” about a young prodigy who invents a machine that hears things humans never could discern, and when it is stolen, takes…