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The Brunettes — Heather Mansfield and Jonathan Bree

Auckland band The Brunettes, led by the duo of Jonathan Bree and Heather Mansfield, has been mining a rich vein of songwriting tradition for over ten years now. Their music is lush, delicate, and the lyrics ironic enough to keep them popular in indie rock circles. Their call and response vocal act — sometimes reminiscent of Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood (RIP) — works as a springboard for developing characters and lyrics and allows them to play their musical strengths and differences off one another.

They’ve certainly come a long way — and racked up a few air miles — since releasing their debut album Holding Hands, Feeding Ducks in 2002. Currently the band is touring NZ to promote new album Structure & Cosmetics, their third album on the Lil Chief label, and their first official stateside release via revered US indie label Sub Pop.

“They distributed our previous albums and made them available in the States, says Bree, “but this is what you would call our first album made for Sub Pop — they plan to do the same marketing job that they do for Sub Pop bands.”

They’re getting a great reception over there too, thanks in part to good, old-fashioned social networking. Myspace.com in North America has been promoting Structure & Cosmetics over the last week and their page is getting 40,000 hits per day — and a whole bunch of new “friends”.

Approving new MySpace pals should keep them busy in between shows — they’re playing Palmerston North’s Bar Mode this Saturday and return to Auckland for a show at the Kings Arms on the 17th before heading off overseas, first to Australia, then to Canada and the USA. And after that, they’re off to Europe.

The American leg will be their first tour headlining over there — previously they’ve played with The Shins, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and Rilo Kiley. They have a new touring lineup too, which includes several members from NZ band The Cosbys, currently on hiatus. “Not pinched or poached,” Bree is careful to add, “from an outside point of view it could look that way, but it wasn’t like that.”

Bree says their relationship with Sub Pop, which began when The Brunettes played support for The Shins in New Zealand, was quite a natural one. “As soon as we were set up with the first North American tour with The Shins, it became good business for both of us.” And of being thrust into a long touring schedule after the NZ part-time version of touring, he says “We were just so excited and we’d wanted a breakthrough like that for so many years. It was incredibly tiring but our excitement outweighed everything.”

The Brunettes Structure & Cosmetics (Lil Chief/Sub Pop)

Recording Structure & Cosmetics was a liittle awkward at first, according to Bree, who starting the process while still touring the USA. When it was time to lay down the first tracks, the old Brunettes rhythm section of James Milne (Reduction Agents, Lawrence Arabia) and Ryan McPhun (of The Ruby Suns, who are also now signed to Sub Pop) were in Auckland, Heather was in New York and Bree was house-sitting in LA. Drums and bass were recorded at Auckland’s Platform studios, with Ed Cake at the controls. “It was a bit difficult at first to coordinate,” says Bree, “but from that point we had the start of the album.”

It’s a slightly darker, more mature sounding release than their previous albums. A rich chorus of layered voices kicks off the album with the opener “Brunettes Against Bubblegum Youth”, which combines chugging electric guitar, analogue synth sounds and snappy drums and handclaps — sounding somewhere smack in the middle of Phil Spector, The Flaming Lips and Spiritualized. They play around with the recorded form in the excellent “Stereo (Mono Mono)”, which features some serious call-response between the left and right speakers. Other tracks like “Her Hairagami Set”, “Credit Card Mail Order” and the title track “Structure & Cosmetics” — a clash between heavily reverbed Nancy & Lee vocals and spaghetti western harmonica, where Bree sings “our hearts and minds will just turn off like argyle never existed” — hang together very well, creating a common sense of purpose throughout the entire album.

“Maybe having longer to compile the songs, perhaps being our third album, may have led to the songs sounding more like a group, says Mansfield. “We had older songs to draw on as well as newer ones, so perhaps there was more of a range to fill the spectrum of sounds.”

“Often Heather and I will play these roles of a couple,” says Bree, “I think there is more of a common theme, and although I wouldn’t call it a concept album, there are recurring themes of retail therapy and the comforts of home. Things people start thinking about more, I suppose, in their late 20s.”

“I’ve always liked albums that show the different sides to a band, says Bree, citing The Beatles’ White Album as the first off the top of his head. “It’s not necessarily cohesive, but it appeals to me. And maybe with our past albums that has annoyed certain people who might border on liking The Brunettes. It’s not that much of a concern, but for this album, musically we’ve honed in on one side of the sound.”

Watch the video for “Her Hairagami Set”: