When experimental pop veterans of Blonde Redhead hit the road, everything became personal.

Every bathroom stop, every meal choice and every pointless detour could have struck a nerve, sparking a day of silence, sulking and simmering frustration.

Only when the band set foot on another stage in another town on another night – ready to rock beautifully, relentlessly and without abandon – was everything sure to cool down.

Like everyone’s favorite Mom and Pop store, Blonde Redhead has, for almost 15 years, kept its business all in the family.

“We’re really not that different from other bands,” said Kyoto-born singer-guitarist Kazu Makino. “Anyone who’s ever been in a band knows what it’s like to be in band. We don’t have it bad, really.”

Still, Makino has a peculiar balancing act on her hands. She has to referee between her two bandmates, Italian-born twin brothers Simone and Amedeo Pace, yet somehow manage to always play favorites.

After all, she hasn’t yet told Amadeo “I do” (despite numerous sources listing them as married), but the couple’s “long-term relationship,” in the words of publicist Catherine Herrick, outdates even the band, which formed in New York City in 1993.

“The two are always arguing and getting really cross with each other,” Makino said. “I suppose when it’s good, it’s good.”

But when it’s bad? That’s the tough part, she said, but once the trio takes the stage, the brothers’ chemistry is undeniable.

With Simone pounding the drums and Amadeo shredding the guitar and crooning blissfully alongside Makino, well, that’s when the family really shines.

“[The brothers] are very different to me,” she said. “A lot of people confuse them and can’t tell them apart, but I always can. They even look different to me.”

On Blonde Redhead’s latest, the cryptically titled “23,” the group forewent a producer for the first time, instead opting to keep the process a family affair.

With a focus on spontaneity and improvisation, Makino and the brothers Pace entered the studio with only loose ideas for songs and nothing more.

Fearful of the record sounding too planned out, the band simply played the chords and sung the lyrics they had in mind, however rough or raw they might’ve been, and let the details work themselves out.

“We wanted to not finish the writing completely,” Makino said, “and create some kind of tension from the songs not being too worked out. There’s a sort of energy in that.”

Both the energy and the tension indeed arrived in spades, but the latter proved a blessing as well as a curse.

“It wasn’t an entirely enjoyable experience,” Makino admitted in a press release preceding the album’s April 10 release.

“Without a producer, a referee, we could really get on each other’s cases. It got intense.”

Thankfully for music fans everywhere, the tensions soon eased, “23″ turned out great and the slightly dysfunctional family that is Blonde Redhead keeps on trucking.

The band will hit – surprise – 23 North American venues on its fall tour, including Athens’ own 40 Watt Club tonight.

Let’s just hope the brothers Pace are at peace with one another come showtime.