Jonathan and Heather met when their respective bands played a show together. They began creating boy/girl melodrama pop inspired by 70s New York punk and 60s girl groups but created in an Auckland scene of opiate-infused garage rock ‘n’ roll.
This seclusion soon produced Mars Loves Venus, a lathe-cut EP pressed up by King Records, Geraldine. The short run quickly sold out and Jonathan set to work demo-ing up the band’s first six albums. Heather and Jonathan’s relationship suffered, understandably. Heather was seen often in New Zealand’s society pages with champagne flutes in each hand, while Jonathan’s striving for sonic perfection within the constraints of four-track cassette recording drove him to Smile-like levels of madness.
Dressed in his fireman’s helmet, Jonathan applied for a job at Marbeck’s, a downtown Auckland record store. It was while he worked there that one of those four-track recordings, Talk To Jesus, was noticed by local manager and promoter Melinda Olykan on Auckland’s college radio station BFM. Pulling out her cheque-book straight away, she managed to get Jonathan away from the store counter for a two-figure sum, and soon The Brunettes were playing shows again. They developed a reputation for quiet, intimate shows of fragile garage pop, the audience laughing at the wry pop culture references in the lyrics, and shushing each other for talking during the songs.
The Brunettes finally released their debut album Holding Hands, Feeding Ducks in the Spring of 2002, and six months later put out a mini album, The Boyracer EP. The uniqueness of these releases and the engaging charm of their live show, gained them a swooning national fan base in New Zealand, made them darlings of its college radio stations, and placed them as the nation’s undisputed number one bubblegum pop band. Tours of Australia and the United Kingdom in 03/04 put the Brunettes in the hearts of indie-pop fans in those corners of the globe too, with rapturously received shows with Architecture in Helsinki, the Postal Service and the Futureheads.
In June 2004 they released their second album, Mars Loves Venus, which reprised the title track of their very first release, and saw the production progress from the bedroom Spector-isms of Holding Hands Feeding Ducks, to a multi-spectral smorgasbord of pop production references from the Grievous Angel to Paisley Park.
Since this release, the Brunettes show has grown in stature to accommodate the so-dubbed Lil’ Chief Pop Orchestrette, a changing, waxing and waning crew of amateur instrumentalists associated with Auckland’s Lil’ Chief Records, a company who have released some of New Zealand’s most unassumingly beautiful pop music of the last few years. Sometimes touring as a five piece and sometimes playing as a ten piece Orchestrette the Brunettes incorporate marimba, glockenspiel, banjo, cello, trumpet, alto and tenor saxophone, the clarinet and more.
In keeping with releasing music annually in 2005 to coincide with their first tour of North America the Brunettes released their second EP When Ice Met Cream featuring five tunes, some new and some favourites of live shows dating back to 2001. Having been invited to tour the US with The Shins, the Brunettes left New Zealand and joined them on the road as a 7-piece. The five week tour was then followed by an invitation to tour with Rilo Kiley for which they slimmed down to a five piece.
The Brunettes are:
Heather Mansfield (keyboard, glockinspiel, marimba, clarinet, vocals)
Jonathan Bree (guitar, vocals)
