An oddly dynamic duo

The past 30 years have taught us that family acts tend to get along pretty well peddling atomically sweet and genteel pop songs. Through the glossy sheen of cascading overdubs, Richard and Karen Carpenter gave the impression that they kept to an early bedtime. The Jackson 5 shook tambourines and were infectious and danceable. The Corrs inhabit saccharine city with "Runaway."

Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger, also known as the experimental rock band the Fiery Furnaces, are a new breed of brother-sister act. They're more likely to get along like Oasis's Noel and Liam Gallagher than, say, Donny and Marie. Aside from Matthew arranging and writing most of the material for his younger sister to sing, the Fiery Furnaces, who play the Paradise Rock Club tonight, don't resemble the smiling siblings who came before them.

"We're brother and sister, so we don't like each other very much," Matthew Friedberger says, partly frank and partly in jest, from New York, "but we like other people even less. There's a lot of scapegoating that goes on with us."

The Friedbergers famously bicker in their interviews, and only a brother can rat out his sister as Matthew is prone to do. He savors telling journalists that Eleanor once worked for the Republican Party as a telemarketer. "She did that in Texas, you know," he says. By Friedberger's account, he and Eleanor weren't very close as children, but being in a band has taught them about each other. "I've noticed how anal she is, and she's realized how dishonest and lazy I am."

For all their squabbles, the Fiery Furnaces come across as a very symbiotic rock

outfit. It's Eleanor's first band, and Matthew fully admits that she is his muse. He writes songs specifically for her, about her experiences in Europe or their childhood memories. She, in turn, sings them against the beat, creating her own rhythm that's slightly ahead of the arrangements. The only children of a British father and an American mother, Eleanor and Matthew grew up in Oak Park, Ill., just outside Chicago. Music was all around them: Their grandmother was the choir director at a Greek Orthodox church, and their mother sang and played piano. "Our father was the serious music fan in the family who exposed us to all sorts of stuff like 18th-century music," Friedberger says.

The siblings formed the Fiery Furnaces in 2000, and within three years they signed with the influential British label Rough Trade. Their debut last year, "Gallowsbird's Bark," full of the cocksure rock 'n' roll of the Who and just a pinch of T. Rex, was by turns spastic and melodic. But its virtuosity is overshadowed by the band's latest album, "Blueberry Boat." It's the kind of album that elicits strong reactions, and rarely is there any middle ground. Either you get it or you don't.

"I'd like for people to be amused by our music. You don't want them to get it exactly right, to know exactly what you were trying to do," Friedberger says. "If everyone loves it, it's no good then. I think a lot of people are annoyed by our approach to the music."

By approach, Friedberger means his penchant for writing 10-minute, tangential opuses that unfurl with layers of pounding keyboards and synthesized interludes. Some critics have described the music as "ADD-style sequencing"; others laud it for its innovation.

Britt Daniel, who fronts the rock band Spoon, is a fan. "When you listen to their music you can tell that they've made a lot of effort," Daniel says. Spoon toured with the Fiery Furnaces last year, and Daniel describes their concerts as "Captain Beefheart with a pretty Joey Ramone on vocals."

To be sure, the Fiery Furnaces' aesthetic definitely takes patience, especially with the lyrics. Friedberger's rhyming tales about walking home from the TCBY or lost dogs -- much like Ann Magnuson's rambling narratives for the art-rock duo Bongwater -- sound credible and even catchy until you check the liner notes. On "Quay Cur," Eleanor sings: "Great gulps of Greek fire get us in/ Sling sticks at the stockade Fort Dauphin/ A guardsman gave a griffin said grease my duke/ Down by the chimney and out through the fluke."

Somebody out there is buying it, though. "Blueberry Boat" was recently the No. 1 album on the CMJ charts, placing the band well ahead of indie-rock stalwarts such as Bjork, Badly Drawn Boy, and Wilco (whom the Fiery Furnaces will open for Oct. 1 at the Wang Center).

Andy Knowles on drums and Toshi Yano on bass and synthesizers round out the band's live act, which Friedberger says is entirely different from their studio performances. "We try to change everything but the vocals when we play live," he says.

The Fiery Furnaces' next album is a collaboration with their grandmother, an album on which Eleanor sings about her aspirations and her grandmother sings about how things really are. Already, Friedberger is relishing the rehearsals. "I had a basic rock 'n' roll improv session with her the other day, and I noticed that some of her organ solos were sounding very snaky and 1930s. I love that." Just so everyone is clear, Friedberger ends the interview with a clarification. Looking out for Eleanor as only a brother can, he says, "Listen, before you go, I just want to tell you that no one in our family is a Republican."

The Fiery Furnaces play the Paradise Rock Club tonight at 10 with White Magic, Night Rally, and DJ Carl Lavin. $12, 18-plus show. 617-562-8800.