Roadtrips

Never let it be said that Touch & Go's Storm & Stress don't want to explain themselves. Highlights from our favorite press release of the year: "[Storm & Stress] is about an impossible situation . . . the improperness of pop artifice mixed with legitimate attempts at being serious . . . teenage aspirations tripped up by music that teenagers probably don't want to listen to . . . it's about being paralyzed by what's in front of you, in this case, the song we're trying to play. It just seems like that's the only honest way to play music right now, without being hokey." Even better: "We're an innocent band, sort of the way robots are innocent. Or the way Claudia Schiffer is innocent in magazine pictures, or the way balloons are at a child's birthday party. Most frighteningly, innocent the way a lot of things exist without giving one shit about me or you. You know, like power lines in Midwestern farm fields heading towards cities . . . " Think post-indie rock's dangling loose threads projected to their fastidious dead ends -- repetition circling into abstraction, blank stares and poker faces. They'll play O'Brien's Pub (617-782-6245) in Allston on September 27 with experimental-folk Brits the Shadow Ring (think the Godz, early VU, Neutral Milk Hotel's weirder moments) and Juneau, before moving on to the Living Room (401-521-5200) in Providence on the 28th.

All right, enough highbrow crap -- for easily understood punk rock, there's G-rated psychotronica misfits the Groovie Ghoulies, on an Eastern-seaboard tear with the helplessly romantic Mr. T Experience at the Middle East (617-864-EAST) on October 1 and the Met Café (401-861-2142) in Providence the next night. The Offspring bypass Boston again in favor of the Strand (401-272-0444) in Providence on October 2, with the ska-flavored Voodoo Glow Skulls and Joykiller, who've just released the most orchestrated retropop-punk album (Three; Epitaph) since Rocket from the Crypt's Scream, Dracula, Scream.

You couldn't ask for a more inspired blend of band and venue: the Squirrel Nut Zippers at the opulent Rhodes-On-the-Pawtuxet Ballroom in Cranston. The swinging septet are still riding high following the left-field success of "Hell." Expect a floor full of enthusiastic first-time and experienced steppers. Call 331-2211.

On the metal front, Henry Rollins's favorite African-American lesbian skinhead hits town when Skunk Anansie raid the Call (401-421-4271) in Providence on September 28, and the Middle East downstairs on September 29. Last, and least, Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson deserves some sort of award for honesty by bringing a band called Geezer with him to the Strand on September 28; the following night he's at Sir Morgan's Cove (508-753-2188) in Worcester.