Roadtrips

As a drum-guitar duo, Seattle's 764-HERO put out one pretty good album and one stellar EP (We're Solids) of fitful, elegiac indie pop, sort of like Karate overdosing on early Smiths or something. They've added a bass player and released more of the same, Get Here and Stay (Up!), only with twice the hooks. That endorsement out of the way, we're ready for our Matt Pinfield moment. The new HERO bassist, James Bertram (ex-Lync), played in a pre-Warner Bros. line-up of Built To Spill, and the HEROic ones are now opening for -- you guessed it -- Built To Spill on October 30 at the Middle East (617-864-EAST) in Cambridge. Built To Spill's drummer, Scott Plouf, used to be in a guitar-drums duo you might have heard of called the Spinanes; lo and behold, the Spinanes, whom singer/guitarist Rebecca Gates has fleshed out into a full band, are at the Iron Horse (413-584-0610) in Northampton on November 4. Meanwhile, on November 3 at Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel (401-272-5876) in Providence, 764-HERO open for the re-formed Sunny Day Real Estate, whose members took a couple years off to find God and Dave Grohl -- they really aren't the same person: God just thinks she's Dave Grohl -- before recording their third album for Sub Pop earlier this year. Now that the emo kids revere Sunny Day as, like, godfathers of the genre or something, they've turned into a stingy, obtuse mess only the Big Guy upstairs could love. And to bring it all home again, Sunny Day hit Karma Club (617-421-9595) in Boston -- by themselves -- on October 4.

Former Tattle Tale gal Madigan Shive has been honing her cello work for the past couple years. She's even played some fairly serious dates in chamber mode under just plain Madigan. On October 2 she'll perform her baroque folk-punk diva stuff in a band setting -- which she does as Bonfire Madigan -- at the all-ages punk outlet the Space (508-753-0017) in Worcester. The same ensemble are so uncategorizable that they're also playing the Longy School of Music (617-629-4727) in Cambridge on November 7.

-- CC