Ask husband and wife duo Tim Kelley and Christa Meyer the meaning behind Puerto Muerto and you are likely to illicit this response: “It was either going to be the name of a bar or the name of a band, and starting a band was cheaper.” This answer gives you an insight into the self proclaimed “punk rock folk music” world of Puerto Muerto. With a back catalogue that features songs about french pirate Jean Lafitte, a song cycle about infanticide and incest and an alternative soundtrack to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it was with a great deal of anticipation that I received I Was A Swallow, Puerto Muerto’s 4th Album. Musically I Was A Swallow revolves around the stripped back sound of Tim Kelley’s guitar, and, while occasionally adding a snare here or an organ swell there, Puerto Muerto’s is very much a stripped to the bone, raw take on Americana. The album opens with a guitar twang the man in black himself would have been proud of, following up with a chugging, muted march of the kind that has been used in country music for over 50 years. With this kind of music, it's the vocal that must do most of the work. Luckily for Puerto Muerto, Christa Meyer’s voice is more than capable of taking centre stage, and the undoubted highlights of this album come when she duets with her own double tracked vocals. Meyer seems equally comfortable singing in both the breathy, nasal tones of country music past and present, and in a blues drenched half moan that is as equally infused with the sounds of the german cabaret and Edith Piaf as it is with the jazz of Billie Holiday or Nina Simone, whose ‘Be My Husband’ is covered here. Just as Lesley Fiest did with ‘Sea Lion Woman’ on The Reminder, Puerto Muerto’s strutting take on ‘Be My Husband’ manages to add to Simone’s original, with Meyer coming across like a less damaged PJ Harvey as hands clap and rattles shake in the background. ‘Low’, the following track, harks back to the German cabaret or an old Jewish folk-song with twinkling piano and reverb drenched percussion.Sadly, the album fares less well when Kelley takes control of the microphone. His voice sounds thin and reedy in comparison to the warmth of his wife’s. Too often on I Was a Swallow both the lyrics and the music slip into Americana cliche; lyrics along the lines of “My baby’s gone now/so alone and blue/I don’t know what to do” (‘Gone Too’) simply aren’t palatable, and the likes of Jolie Holland and Jessie Sykes do a similar thing slightly more successfully than Puerto Muerto have achieved here. While by no means a bad album, you can’t help but wandering what would have happened had Meyer’s sad, powerful voice been provided with a more inventive backing. 73%Links Puerto Muerto [myspace]