It’s odd writing this review knowing that the album’s creators are merely hours away from no longer existing. In case you haven’t been paying attention, Chicago duo Puerto Muerto, consisting of Christa Meyer and Tim Kelley, are playing their last show tonight at the Empty Bottle. And it’s quite a shame seeing how their latest release, Drumming For Pistols, is an excellent excercise in painfully honest emotional salience told through a veil of midwestern blues.

“Oh Daddy, Oh Daddy, why’d you do those things to me?” sings Christa Meyer in the disturbingly catchy duet “Tamar,” which is a clever reinterpretation of the bible story in which Puerto Muerto’s male half Tim Kelley portrays Judah.

It’s that sort of dark imagery over tension-filled violins and twangy, alt-country guitar that makes Drumming For Pistols such an immediate listen, and perhaps why the band are calling it quits only weeks after the record was released. It takes a lot of courage to write a song so piercing – even if the account is a retelling of a classic Bible tale – because both Meyer and Kelley have to take on roles that have so much inner turmoil and pain.

The more the listener delves into the album, the duo’s deterioration as a married couple that plagued the Drumming For Pistols writing process becomes clearer. Although, perhaps plagued is the wrong word choice as the music definitely did not suffer.

“The Bell Ringer” features some harrowing vocals courtesy of Meyer – she sounds as though she could breakdown in tears at any second – over heart-breaking bell hits. While “Arcadia” opens with big Fleetwood Mac-like ’70s arena rock guitar work from Kelley, it shifts to a melodic, shimmering guitar bridge until collapsing back into the big fuzzy riffs where it all began.

The album’s centerpiece is the delicate, slow burning, “Vermillion Sky,” in which Meyer sings “I was the torch/ which led you here/ to your house/ beside the ocean/ storms crashing down/ while dampening my light/ but my smoke was a lingering light,” until Kelley enters with a refrain of “Into the the wide/ Vermillion Sky” showcases the duo’s passionate and metaphoric imagery.

“Hurting Now” is one of the few Kelley solo takes in which he seems to bare his soul by lamenting about a lost love over soft acoustic guitar strums and drifting piano strikes. Then the closing track, “Goodbye To The End,” is probably the most fitting way to end the album given the circumstances and turbulent times surrounding the its creation, but the song is more of a statement that sometimes goodbyes are met with the softening of regrets and are necessary for moving forward.

Generally, Drumming For Pistols is a dark affair filled with thematic elements of lost love, collapsing relationships, death, violence and learning how to say goodbye. But it’s the stripped down, bare bones instrumentation and bright production that brings these themes from being only sad and tortuous to sad and tortuous yet melodically enticing and strangely satisfactory at the album’s conclusion.

Drumming For Pistols could be the soundtrack that encompasses that one horrible day where absolutely nothing goes right, but in the end, once the pain is accepted, it’ll only make you stronger.
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Catch Puerto Muerto perform at the Empty Bottle tonight, Monday, February 22, for the Drumming For Pistols record release show, which will also be the band’s final show. The show begins at 9:30 p.m. and is FREE!
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“Hurting Now” Music Video for Puerto Muerto from T. Foley on Vimeo.

It’s usually not a good sign when one member of a duo doesn’t show. I suggest catching Puerto Muerto on February 22 at the Empty Bottle as it might be your last chance to catch the band…possibly forever. The full note from Christa is below:

Hello all!

I just wanted to let the fine folks of Saint Louis know that I will not be performing with Puerto Muerto on Saturday night. I wish I could be there, but he spirits have carried me to another place and I’ll be hanging out in a romantic cloud somewhere nice with my valentine.

I hope you have a smashing evening with Tim and the gang!

Love
Christa

There’s a lot going on in the world of Puerto Muerto, one of our 10 Chicago Bands To Watch In 2010.

Next Tuesday, February 9, 2010, Puerto Muerto will release their latest effort, Drumming For Pistols. You can check out the title track right now: Puerto Muerto – Drumming For Pistols.

The husband and wife duo, consisting of Christa Meyer and Tim Kelley, will then play two record release shows. The first show will be on Saturday, February 13, at the Schafly Tap Room in St. Louis, then a second homecoming record release show at Chicago’s Empty Bottle on Monday, February 22. Additionally, the band have released a video for Drumming For Pistols’ acoustic ballad, “Hurting Now,” which features a dancing woman in Native American garb who goes topless at the clip’s conclusion. You can check it out below.

But, most importantly, according to a story on Puerto Muerto from the Daily Herald, the band faced troubled times both societally and personally during the writing and recording of the new album.

Some personal upheaval was under way, too. Meyer said her marriage to Puerto Muerto singer and guitarist Tim Kelley went through some tumult during the making of the record, and that the two now plan to go their separate ways, both personally and professionally,

“A lot was happening to us, and I think we kind of fed off that on the record,” Meyer said. “It added some emotional juice to the music we were making,”
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Looking ahead, Meyer said she plans to continue writing and performing music on her own.

“I’m still going to be writing as much as I can, trying to move in a more intimate direction with it,” she said. “I don’t want to be at arm’s distance from the music. I’m very happy with what we did with Puerto Muerto, but now I’m going to try to go in a new direction.”

Yeesh. That sucks. As fans of Puerto Muerto, we hope that Drumming For Pistols isn’t the last we’ve heard from them.

In the meantime, check out the video for “Hurting Now” rom Drumming For Pistols. (Maybe NSFW as their is nudity towards the end.)

“Hurting Now” Music Video for Puerto Muerto from T. Foley on Vimeo.

While Puerto Muerto fans will have to wait until February 9 for the full album, “Drumming For Pistols” will surely tide them over until then.

The track features Puerto Muerto’s female component Christa Meyer taking on lead vocals over a galloping a bass line and driving tom-heavy drum beat. Then the epic guitar hits from Tim Kelley take the song to soaring heights in a classical spanish meets punk rock kind of way.

The press release provides a couple of insights from band members Meyer and Kelley on the writing and recording process of the soon to be released Drumming For Pistols:

For Meyer Drumming for Pistols’ tone has a subjective aspect as well: “Writing and recording this album came during one of the most emotionally turbulent periods of my life. There was a feeling of dissolution, of breaking down completely—and the celebration of life as it teetered on the edge of destruction was an interesting subject to explore.”

Not surprisingly, their marriage is another important factor. “It’s strange and beautiful at the same time,” Kelley confesses. “For a lot of guys in bands, I think that music is a separate experience, a guy thing, that they compartmentalize into a different world where wives and girlfriends are not invited. For us it’s an exploration of our relationship as well as a kind of therapy that brings us together.”

Additionally, Puerto Muerto are planning Spring tour as a duo across Europe while the North American dates will feature a full band. Sweet!

The free download of “Drumming For Pistols” is available at Firerecords.com.