Family that plays with fire

Matt and Eleanor Friedberger don't let a few differences get in the way of making music.

Matt and Eleanor Friedberger didn't get along when they were growing up in Oak Park, Illinois. Matt is four years older so he was the urban brother who would ignore me when I was being a tomboy," says 29-year-old Eleanor.

But for five years now the pair have been making odd, intriguing and at times pesky sounding rock'n'roll together as the Fiery Furnaces.

They play at Schooner Tavern, Quay St, on Wednesday with a full band and support from local acts Coco Solid and the Whipping Cats.

The older Friedberger may not have shown it at first, but he had a soft spot for his sister and on her 14th birthday bought her the Velvet Underground's Loaded.

"None of my friends knew who the Velvet Underground were," says Eleanor proudly. "Matt is a really dominating personality and he'd buy records and crank them up to full volume. My bedroom was next door I'd listen to everything he did. He's got good taste and explored all these different genres of music and it was great for me. What we really bonded over was records.

"Then Matt bought me a guitar for Christmas when I was 18 and made me a little notebook with guitar chords for Sweet Jane and Smells Like Teen Spirit and all that stuff."

They both went their separate ways, going to college and travelling the world. But in 2001 they both found themselves in New York and started the Fiery Furnaces.

"Back then we had fun making up songs, then it became a job, and now it's not as much fun as it used to be," Eleanor jokes.

It's only three years since their debut album Gallowsbird's Bark was released and they are already up to number four with this year's Bitter Tea.

Rehearsing My Choir was a real family affair recorded with their 82-year-old grandmother, who has been a singer and musician all her life. Brother and sister put her stories to music and Eleanor and her gran shared the singing.

"She's like the big musician in the family and she had a big effect on Matt and I," Eleanor says.

"We had talked about doing a record with her ... and we convinced the record label. "We wanted to set her stories to music, and the music explains the stories and it acts out what she is talking about and thinking about. It sounds like a piano-parlour record really - kind of beaten down."

Bitter Tea, recorded a month later, is a very different album - something record label Rough Trade were probably happy about.

"After finishing Rehearsing My Choir we wanted to do something different ... a young girl record. So it sounds very shiny and poppy with the synthesisers and drums and stuff."

Eleanor says I'm In No Mood, from Bitter Tea, is an example of a song that her grandmother could have sung as a girl.

Her gran must have had some crazy teenage years judging by lines like: "I was so drunk last night I didn't even undress for bed, and the pin in my hair was still stuck in my head," are anything to go by.

Then there's Oh Sweet Woods, a great yarn about Mormons.

"That song we just did on the last day of mixing where I just talked that story over the beat boxing and Matt turned it into this crazy song."

She says the dynamics between the brother and sister writing team are different every time.

"The biggest fight we had was over the song Nevers. Matt loved the way it sounded, cutting up our voices and having them backwards, but I was mortified by it. So we compromised by having the forward version of Nevers as the bonus track.

"Our taste in music is actually the one thing we have in common."

* The Fiery Furnaces, brother and sister Eleanor and Matt Friedberger at the Schooner Tavern, Quay St, Auckland on July 5.

* New album: Bitter Tea, out now

* Other albums: Gallowsbird's Bark (2003); Blueberry Boat (2004); Rehearsing My Choir (2005)