For 25 minutes, D.C. United attacked the Chicago Fire unrelentingly. They poured all of their efforts forward, creating chance after chance. In the process, they scored the two goals they needed to advance to the Eastern Conference finals. Unfortunately, United’s disjointed play during the preceding 70 minutes allowed Chicago to tally two goals of their own, earning them the 2-2 tie, the 3-2 series victory on aggregate, and a ticket to the next round….

D.C. United’s MLS season is on the line tonight at RFK Stadium (7:30 p.m.). After a dominant regular season that saw United go 10-2-3 at home, they return to RFK for possibly the last time this season. Standing in their way is their playoff nemesis, the Chicago Fire. In 5 total playoff games against the Fire, D.C. has yet to score a goal. United will need to find net if they wish to move on…

Relatively few critics can resist the temptation to invoke natural imagery when describing the instrumental epics of Pelican. This should come as no surprise, as the Chicago quartet creates songs that truly move at a glacial pace—songs that sometimes spend as long as 20 minutes building up and tearing down a single melody. Over the past few years, the band has increasingly come to favor a more restrained approach, allowing the subtleties of guitarists Laurent Lebec and Trevor de Brauw’s complex interplay to come to the fore. This has earned them a number of comparisons to 90s post-rock icons like Slint and Mogwai as well as more contemporary acts like crescendo-obsessed Texans Explosions in the Sky. A quick listen to Pelican’s latest, City of Echoes, confirms these comparisons; over the course of eight tracks and 42 minutes (a downright lean runtime for Pelican) the record explores ideas of urban space through the use of shifting textures, scales and dynamics. One track on the album even consists almost entirely of two dueling acoustic guitar lines. So perhaps, you can see how we’ve managed to forget one important fact over the last few years: Pelican is a metal band.

>> If you go to tonight’s fundraiser to lend your support the Chung family, the owners of Custom Cleaners who were sued by Roy Pearson for $54 million over a missing pair of pants, are you also supporting the mission of the party’s host, the American Tort Reform Society? >> An electronic gauge that contains small amounts of two radioactive elements was reported stolen yesterday from a construction site in Waldorf. The radioactive materials…