When Warren Fischer and Casey Spooner began working together, they were as interested in creating anarchic, performance art pieces about pop music as they were in writing pop songs. Their first gig – an unannounced appearance at a Manhattan Starbucks – was a benchmark for the duo, who were fascinated by the idea of big pop cultural disasters, of all the things that can go horribly wrong in a sleek, manufactured pop show. The rest of the world, though, seems to have finally caught up with Fischerspooner – as Casey explains, these days, pop stars are so self-consciously messy that nobody knows where the facade is, and no one can stop looking.

"I think that one of the most profound and powerful things I’ve seen in a long time was the Britney performance on the MTV Music awards two years ago, and the things she did throughout that whole period," he explains. "The culture of celebrity has changed in a fascinating way. For a child star like Britney, who has been cultivated her entire life, to do something so radical as to cut her hair off publicly ... it’s like she was shedding her ability to make money for people, she was shedding her sexuality, she was shedding her beauty, she was shedding everything in this incredible symbolic moment." Pop music is so open and abject now, he laughs, that the bizarre things Fischerspooner were doing in their performance art ten years ago have become mainstream, even normal.

After several years away from Fischerspooner, working with experimental theatre troupe The Wooster Group on a production of Hamlet, Casey has returned, invigorated, with a new enthusiasm for performing and a new album, Entertainment. Their warmest and most accessible record to date, Entertainment is the product of a collaboration between Fischerspooner and Jeff Saltzman. "I have no musical background," says Casey, "so I work with Warren almost like an actor works with a director. When Jeff came in, he was able to strike a balance between us." Entertainment represents the best possible blending of Warren’s rigid, formalist approach to composition and Casey’s love of emotion and character in pop music, and it’s easily the duo’s best album yet.

It wouldn’t be Fischerspooner, of course, without an elaborate live show, and this time around, Casey’s connection with The Wooster Group has allowed the pair to branch out into some intriguing directions. "When we started working on the show to accompany this album, we did about three weeks of really intensive workshops with them," he says. "All of the rehearsals were videotaped, and a lot of the rehearsals are integrated into the projections for the show. There’s a funny rehearsal aesthetic to the show right now, where you see us working on developing stuff onscreen, then you see us doing it, right there in front of that rehearsal footage.

"This time around, it’s really about the synthesis between movement and set design and image and costume," he continues. "It’s about trying to create something that’s visually powerful. We’re fascinated with performers like Laurie Anderson and Grace Jones, performers with a powerful image." So, it’s performance art about performance art, then. Confused? You might well be, but then, that’s part of Fischerspooner’s charm.

ENTERTAINMENT is out now on Inertia. www.fischerspooner.com

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