Fiery Furnaces: Indie rock's most esoteric brother-sister act? (VIDEO)

Matthew Friedberger's always looking for the next creative spark to fuel the Fiery Furnaces.

Friedberger and his sister Eleanor front the experimental rock outfit, and they're are always coming up with unique ways to showcase their songs.

The band based its 2009 album I'm Going Away on '70s sitcom themes, and then re-recorded the tunes to come up with their new self-cover record, Take Me Round Again.

To top that off, the band's working on the forthcoming Silent Record project for its fans.

"The fun's all in the creativity," Matthew Friedberger said in a recent interview. "It's all in the spirit of rock music to try new things and involve people with your music."

That's why fans will be heading out to see Tuesday's Fiery Furnaces' show at the Bluebird Theater in Denver. You never know what form the band's music will morph into during a concert.

"Eleanor and I did come from a musical family," Friedberger said. "Our grandmother was the choir director and organist at church, my mother played piano and our father was a serious music fan. There was always playing and singing in our house.

"I

bought Eleanor her first guitar and she played in a punk band at first. I started performing with her in 2001, but our first record didn't come out until 2003."

The Fiery Furnaces set out to make a big pop record, but the band wanted to throw some unique elements into the mix.

"To some extent our sound is based on Eleanor's voice," Friedberger said. "We liked big, pop records and albums by Bo Diddley, the Who and Elton John. We wanted to imitate these popular records, but in a respectful way, so we did things that extended the sounds and got these different results.

"We do think of ourselves as a mainstream rock band, but we do sound different from one album to the next."

The Fiery Furnaces decided to take a completely different approach when they made I'm Going Away.

"Our last LP, Bitter Tea, was very complicated with its different arrangements," Friedberger said. "It was very aggressive, but our newest record is very casual and simple. I was influenced by '70s sitcom theme songs for this record.

"My favorite theme songs were 'Taxi' and 'Welcome Back Kotter,' because there was nothing complicated about them. They were simple and sentimental. So we wanted that amicability to come through on this record and capture that '70s sound."

The Fiery Furnaces tried a little experiment with their fans before I'm Going Away was released.

The group asked fans to describe what the new record would sound like, took the suggestions and created Take Me Round Again.

"We asked people to describe this imaginary record," Friedberger said. "That made us decide to create an alternative version of the CD. We totally arranged the songs from I'm Going Away so they sound like new tunes. Only the lyrics are the same."

As if that wasn't enough fuel the creative fires, the Fiery Furnaces came up with an idea to create the Silent Record.

The band plans to release instructions and musical notations, so fans can create their own project.

"Silent Record's going to come out in book form and it will be something anybody can use to make music," Friedberger said. "We wrote this music for fans to play. We're then going to host a series of concerts, where the fans can play all the compositions on Silent Record."

In the end, every Fiery Furnace song becomes a completely different entity in concert.

"We use parts of songs in concert, because we don't feel obligated to play the full record live," Friedberger said. "We want to do something different for our fans and that means we play something different than what's on the record.

"We might change a song to a minor key or rearrange a song -- or wildly change it out. We just want to take the songs on a little adventure, and have them grow up and be a different person.

"That makes it easier for people to make the songs their own."