(Fire)

www.firerecords.com/

With a record as quixotic as Drumming for Pistols, it's hard to pin down the precise moment this Chicago-based married duo makes its Great Leap Forward, but by the time it has cast 13 strange and different spells, you just know it's happened.

Maybe it's during the second cut, the dirty-gospel flavored rocker "Tamar," when the classically trained mezzo-soprano Christa Meyer belts out the freighted chorus "Oh, Daddy, oh, Daddy, why'd you do those things to me?" and sends a shiver of pleasure and discomfort down your spine. Or maybe it happens during the Werner Herzog-inspired chamber piece, "The Bell Ringer," when the handbells and strings (courtesy Bright Eyes/Head of Femur contributor Tiffany Kowalski) augment a wistful Eastern European theme perfectly suited to Meyer's operatic voice. Perhaps it's the new-and-improved garage-rock stomper "Tanze," in which Meyer's wicked bilingual delivery recalls Thee Headcoatees, or the disorienting swirl of the carnival waltz "Beautiful Women With Shining Black Hair." Other candidates could include hubbie Tim Kelley's turns on "Hurting Now," a simple piano-and-guitar sad-ballad reminiscent of Jon Langford's mellower Mekons fare, and the organ-washed weeper "Settle Down Belinda," which sounds like Richard Hawley on a Southwestern bender.

But just when you think any one of these could be The Moment, the duo closes with a gorgeous one-two punch. First, the ain't-no-redemption song "Seven Sinners," in which Meyer's doo-wop "shoop-de-doos" give Kelley's guitar and traditional-sounding verses a surreal, David Lynch twist. Then comes the coda, the Spanish guitar-flavored "Goodbye to the End," which captures the band's narrative sophistication in cinematic fashion when Meyer sings, "And the drums will play/A tune like madness/The streets are dark now/the asphalt's warm/we are walking the streets until midnight/we are craving a life undone."

Early Puerto Muerto records tended to ramble all over the map, a lack of focus highlighting the band's shortcomings as often as their strengths, and there are a couple of over-reaches here, especially the prog-rock misstep "Arcadia." But with time, they've zeroed in on what works best for them, and made a sentiment like "undone" mostly a narrative conceit only.

Standout Tracks: "Seven Sinners" "Tamar" "Settle Down Belinda" JOHN SCHACHT