This is Puerto Muerto.  A band I'm so glad lives in Chicago.  Tim Kelley and Christa Meyer are married and formed this band together.  Tim sings and plays guitar.  Christa sings and plays drums.  Their music has  been described as "artsy country, gothic cabaret" by Monica Kendrick from the Reader.  I tend to agree. But what kind of gothic and what kind of country?  How about Nick Cave street in unincorporated Johnny Cash County.  They put this manly tension in songs that on paper can sound just plain too sweet.  Their dark folk impulses are effortless, and are in everything they play.   They don't even need to dress all in black.  Imagine them to be not fans of Nick Cave, but his former roommates.  Chicago has to wake the fuck up and support this local stand out of a band.  They deserve to live off their music in a charming somewhat haunted house in Willow Springs.  They deserve renown from all over.

They do enhance and deepen the local culture. I understand they travel and perform abroad.  I know they performed all over Europe.  They've been to England....Spain.  I read about them here and there in the Reader and the Tribune.  Their name just stuck.  It was just this fabulous name.  It's bold and dark. 

   This article in the Reader finally taunts me into going.  They were opening for the Mekons, at Schubas.  I was late, but something made me buy the cd from the merch table.  I've only read of them.  I could really feel fucked if I still don't like what I hear in the car.  It turns out I only felt fucked because I missed the performance.  They are amazing.  Their music as dark as their name suggests.  Naturally this builds anticipation for next time.  Each song forms it's own relationship with me.  "Hello Moscow" left me feeling this spaghetti western euphoria.  The darkness in  "Be My Husband" comes in the delivery of the song. In all their songs darkness is a fog, intangible but evident, and undeniable. Yet, it would not be evident if you just read the lyrics off the page.  

So, now fast forward to this past Monday, they are playing at the Hideout, here in Chicago.  The Hideout is something else.  I believe Neko Case has played there.  It has been renown for having some really cool "insurgent-country", quirky folk, music.  It sits on the edge of this industrial park.  This is my first time going, and it's to see Puerto Muerto.  It's actually my second time seeing them, by now, yet it still feels like the first.  I arrive early, just as the first act is on his third to last song.  He's actually not bad, but I'm here on a mission.  At last, Puerto Muerto perform.  They don't wear black....they don't need to.  Christa Meyer's voice trots a horse in a Faulkner novel when not joyriding the back of an endangered eagle.  You feel these ups and downs when she sings.  Very operatic, and tense.  Christa's hands wringing together when she plays these songs.  It's amazing to finally see it live.  I so wanted to meet them after, because their music has been what I've been listening to constantly for a year.  And I'm so glad they are local.  So after their set, I brood around until finally work the nerve past this shy streak of mine.  They are actually nice.  I hope I did not freak them out, because you never live it down.