Big Blood

Big Blood are Colleen Kinsella and Caleb Mulkerin, a married couple in Portland, Maine, who since 2007 have been recording prolifically at home with no attempt to make money. I probably love their music more than they do themselves, or they would just sit around listening to it instead of making more.

They each write and sing lead on their own songs, but Colleen usually sings backup for Caleb, and her voice is the heart of their sound. It's been described to me as "discordant screeching", "the worst singer in the world", and "is there something wrong with the recording or is she doing that on purpose?" During rehearsals for Stravinski's The Rite of Spring, musicians kept thinking there were mistakes in the score. What Colleen is doing on purpose is using timbre and vibrato so creatively that it doesn't sound like a human voice could even go there. She can spend an entire song playing with a level of laser-focused shrillness that other singers can barely touch.

Even if she were an average singer, I would still love her cryptic metaphysical lyrics, like "Remember the chills before being" or "Does a man seek his own face for the flaws in shadows beneath?" And they would still be my favorite musical stylists for their rhythms that hammer the one beat, their fuzz-folk instrumentation, their in-your-face dissonance, and the way their songs get increasingly noisy -- and that's just their early sound. They would also be among my favorite stylists for their spare, deliberate, spacy later sound.

Most of their music is available on this Free Music Archive page, but some of their best stuff is not, and they have a few good songs on side projects under other names. Here's their discography on Discogs, their web site, dontrustheruin, their bandcamp page, and a Facebook fan page.

When I first started going through their songs I only liked about one in ten -- but I liked those so much that I kept going through the duds looking for more gems, and finding them. To give you more options for where to start, here are some three song samplers:

Light Colleen: Go See Boats, She Sells Sanctuary, Oh Country.
Heavy Colleen: Creepin Crazy Time, Dead Song, Away Pt III.
Weird Colleen: Destin Rain, Everything Is Improving, Lectric Lashes 2.
Extreme Colleen: Glory Daze, Song For Baltimore, I Will Love You.
Rock Caleb: It's Alright, Old Time Primitives, Sovereignty You Bitch.
Folk Caleb: Hangman, Sick With Information, The Rise of Quinnisa Rose.
Weird Caleb: South Of Portland, Sirens Knell, Don't Trust The Ruin.

And here it is album by album. Disclaimer: I only discovered them in August of 2014, and every time I spend an evening listening, the next day I edit this page to fix mistakes and add stuff I missed. If anyone wants to discuss the music, you can email me at ranprieur at gmail.

Asian Mae - Collsing (1999 - 2004)

Officially Big Blood are not a duo but a "phantom four piece of Asian Mae, Caleb Mulkerin, Rose Philistine and Colleen Kinsella." I'm guessing that when they do overdubs in their home studio, they're more creative if they take on imaginary alternate identities. Anyway, this is a collection of Colleen's recordings before Big Blood. The only thing I really like is a pretty folk song called Window In Time. They were also in a band called Cerberus Shoal, whose music mostly bores me.

Strange Maine 11.04.06

Strange Maine is a place in Portland that has live shows, but this is not purely a live album because several songs have extra vocal tracks. Listen closely to All Operations and you can hear why Big Blood has never been "lo-fi", because it takes planning and skill to start with a live show and end up with two voices balanced between the left and right channels. A Quiet Lousy Roar explodes into more Colleens than I can count, and it briefly surpassed All Operations as my favorite when I was first able to wrap my ears around it. I also love the timeless hillbilly folk choruses in Caleb's Under The Concourse. But now my favorite is back to the only song I liked on the first listen, Past Time. It's like an extended vocal solo by an ethereal lounge singer in an alternate 1940's, with almost no repetition, and words that slip into incoherence among soul-splitting notes. "Guide us astray of golden threads so loose that binding me are they still."

Strange Maine 1.20.07

Sovereignty You Bitch is some great noise rock from Caleb, and if you like his voice, The Fall of Quinnisa Rose is the song where it's the most raw. Suffer Creation is a successful experiment where Colleen layers a bunch of eerie vocal tracks. And her cover of the Sumatran folk song Indang Pariaman sounded at first like some kind of awful Hindu temple chant, but on my third or fourth listen I suddenly got it and now it's one of the most trippy things I've ever heard.

Space Gallery Jan. 27, 2007 Sahara Club Jan. 28, 2007

Yet another enhanced live album, and one of their best. Glory Daze is like a demonic circus song where Colleen really lets it rip with her vocals, and A Hole In One is also intense and interesting. Sequins is one of their weirdest songs, a cover of an even more obscure song by Alex Lukashevsky, and the first Big Blood song I would play for Tom Waits. The Caleb songs are even better. She Said Nothing is an ambitious folk song with impressive string plucking, and one of the few times Caleb doesn't use his Neil Young voice. I wonder if they wrote it together, since it seems to have elements of both of their styles. Don't Trust The Ruin is an epic dissonant dirge, and I can't make out the whole chorus but I like to think the line is "Ever its silence is sound." And The Rise of Quinnisa Rose is almost Big Blood's greatest song. It's their only song that feels like a seamless co-creation of both partners, and Colleen's vocals are as intense and beautiful as anything I've ever heard. Quinnisa Rose is their daughter, who was born in 2007 and would start contributing to their albums immediately if you count crying, in 2010 as a speaker, and in 2015 as a singer-songwriter.

Sew Your Wild Days Tour Vol. 1 (2007)

Colleen's voice has continued to get more polished over the years, but this is the album where it cracks my skull. Adversaries & Enemies is a top notch folk song, and has almost her edgiest singing. Vitamin C is a screech-core cover of the krautrock classic. Don't Trust The Ruin II sounds like Joanna Newsom's ghost covering "Bela Lugosi's Dead", but I wonder about the title because it sounds nothing like Don't Trust The Ruin, and a lot like A Quiet Lousy Roar. And Song For Baltimore is my god. Sometimes in a dream I'll hear music that's better than any music could possibly be in the real world, but Song For Baltimore is that good -- I'm afraid if I hear it too many times I'll wake up. This world is shadows on a wall and Song For Baltimore is turning to see the light. I make hard decisions by asking what would Song For Baltimore do. I'm not sure if it references the city of Baltimore, because there's also a Baltimore Avenue in South Portland, and I have a crazy theory that Baltimore is a joke name for death.

Sew Your Wild Days Tour Vol. II (2007)

If I divide Big Blood into eras, their impossibly good first era peaked and ended with Song For Baltimore, and this album is like a bookend, or a vacation, because where do you go after that? Nothing here sticks with me, but I'm just glad they didn't retire. My favorite track is Haystack, which has some nice singing and musical breathing.

Fire On Fire: Self-titled and The Orchard (2007-2008)

Fire On Fire is a side project with both members of Big Blood and some other folks. I'm lumping their two albums together, and I don't know where they fit chronologically with the other 2007-2008 albums. Caleb's great song is Hangman, an improved version of A Friendly Noose from their first album, with Colleen adding maybe her prettiest vocals ever. She also sings a catchy song about reincarnation, Amnesia, and her best song is Squeeze Box. The verses are folk but the choruses have a completely original sound, like doom chamber rock. That seems like a cello backing her up, which sadly has not happened since, but after mastering the high notes, she's giving her voice a sharp edge on the low notes, and already this is the answer to where they go next.

The Grove (2008)

This was probably recorded before The Orchard, so Squeeze Box was a refinement of something already fully realized in The Grove Is Hotter Than An Ocean's Oven, Colleen's first and maybe her best full-spectrum vocal performance. The backing music seems like a transition between the noisy chords of their early sound and the note-by-note riffs of their later sound. No Gravity Blues is unique among Colleen's best songs in having no repeating structure. The whole thing is a buildup and resolution around the shocking note at 1:44. At first I couldn't tell whether this was a stripped down version of its companion, Low Gravity Blues, or whether that was a rocked up version of this. Now it's obvious: No Gravity Blues was divinely inspired and Low Gravity Blues is just a tribute. Something Brighter Than The News is better than a tribute, using the same style in a new song with more layers of spookiness. In The Light Of The Moon is a pretty Caleb song on one of my favorite themes, the conflict between the world of dreams and the depressing material world, and it has his best lyrics. "I used to be a lover from a well-oiled plan, but now I'm just loving the things I don't understand."

'Lectric 'Lashes (2008)

Another side project, a collaboration with the band Visitations. Everything is untitled, most of it is improvised, and the only thing I like is side A track 2, a super-dreamy soft-psych song.

Big Blood and The Bleedin' Hearts (2008)

The Bleedin' Hearts are three other Portland musicians who each play on four songs. One of them, Oh Country (Skin & Bones), is my third favorite of all Colleen songs, and sounds like a prettied-up Song For Baltimore: three verses, wordless wailing choruses, and music that gradually builds. Here's a video of Oh Country live. The other great song is Graceless Lady, a nine minute drone folk epic and one of their most ambitious recordings. Caleb's best on this album is The Birds & The Herds, a catchy song about animals looking forward to the fall of humanity.

Already Gone I and II (2009)

On the whole double album the only thing I really like is a cover of the 80's hit She Sells Sanctuary. The Winds House is a rare song where I don't like Colleen's voice. I suspect that Comin' Home Pt I was completely improvised. Breath In A Seed is one of Caleb's better songs. Beatle Bones & Smokin Stones is impressively weird. And on the psych rock instrumental Polly + The Sheep, is that an electric guitar tuned like bagpipes?

Night Terrors On The Isle Of Louis Hardin (2010)

All I hear is amateur dark ambient, and they do it better on Radio Valkyrie.

Dead Songs (2010)

This is their first good album not on the free music archive. The title track is their first full-on rock song, and it kicks ass. I like to close my helmet and sing it when I'm riding my scooter. A Spiral Down is less powerful but has even better vocals. New Eyes is a quiet lazy song that continues to grow on me. The Archivist & The Archeologist is a personal song that I can't get into, but when Colleen sings like an ordinary person about ordinary stuff, it's a valuable reminder that when she sings like a witch about the beauty of death, that's just an artistic persona (and the best one ever).

Operators & Things (2010)

A short album with some great short doom folk, South of Portland, and I love the first part of Lay Your Head On The Rails, but what is that instrument? Destin Rain is my fourth favorite Colleen song, and the it's only other time she sings like in the verses of Song For Baltimore. Why doesn't she sing like that all the time? Is there a road not taken where Big Blood could have been even better? Will she ever do a whole album like that? My guess is, that voice only works in an exceptional kind of song that she's only ever written twice.

Dark Country Magic (2010)

Big Blood's most popular album is not even in my top ten, maybe because it sounds so clean. The one great song is Creepin Crazy Time, a polished psych rock upgrade of Talking Head Pt I from Already Gone II. Colleen's other major songs, She Wander(er) and Coming Home Pt III, are really good but lean more toward Stevie Nicks than Cthulhu. And her backing vocals on the Caleb songs are barely audible -- compare Reverse Hymnal to South of Portland or Don't Trust The Ruin. They'll do the clean sound better on Double Days II.

Big Blood & The Wicked Hex (2011)

If I'd been following Big Blood from the beginning I would have gone apeshit over this album because there was no way to see it coming in terms of style or quality. All five songs are by Colleen, and four of them are four of her best. The style is more rock than folk, with a strong slow beat and clear single notes in hypnotic repeating patterns. Run is impeccably crafted from one guitar riff, one fuzz bass riff, and one great vocal hook, and it was their first to pass 10,000 on YouTube. I Will Love You is their heaviest song, with banshee howls over chanting and distortion. Never Let Me Go is similar to Run, not as tight but darker and weirder. And Water, in its own way, is Colleen's greatest song, 14 minutes of such beauty that I forget it was made by humans and not spun by angels out of starbeams. I can't tell if it's happy or extremely sad.

Micah Blue Smaldone Split (2012)

Micah is a friend who performed on at least one of their albums. He does two songs here and they do three, and they must really like him because this is great stuff. Sister is a dirge by Caleb, and his best full-length song since 2007. Kentucky Babe is a cover of a song from 1896, and Colleen has never sounded more unearthly. The Queen and Her Court is her most ambitious work between Wicked Hex and Unlikely Mothers, and maybe her least weird great song.

Old Time Primitives (2012)

The title track is my favorite Caleb song that's not enhanced by Colleen's vocals, although there is a "mystery singer". His other great song, Sirens Knell, sounds like an orc anthem. Colleen has some early drafts of songs that will be perfected later. But how do they know, when they pick the title Leviathan Song Pt I, that it will be that particular song that spawns an improved part two, when it won't be recorded for another two years? I like to classify Colleen's songs by what season they sound like, and her best song on this album, Out Of Turn, has a vibe that puts it in late fall. Scroll down or click here for a month by month playlist.

Radio Valkyrie 1905-1917 (2013)

The most normal song on this album, Everything Is Improving, is still one of their weirdest songs, with heavy fuzz and Colleen singing like the queen of the underworld. I wonder if she's trying to match the feel of Sirens Knell. The rest of the album is spooky and ambient. Cast Iron Hand is a good example, and I love The Mirror Like Sea.

Fight For Your Dinner vol. I (2014)

No sign of a volume two, and this seems to be one of those albums where they throw the dregs and flotsam of their creativity against the wall and see what sticks. The title track is a dark piano ballad, and Caleb has a beautiful song about human extinction, Sick With Information. The hidden gem and most musically interesting song is You Need Then It Comes, with a distinctive high-pitched instrument complementing tight fuzz guitar and accordion. Is it just a guitar through a really good filter? Whatever it is, it sounds even better taking the lead on Twin Skin II, and I never thought I'd say this, but I'd like the song better without Colleen's vocals, which are too throaty.

Unlikely Mothers (2014)

Their most serious album. Every song is over seven minutes and aiming high. Caleb has always sung like Neil Young, and now they're playing like Crazy Horse on It's Alright and Endless Echo. Of course I like the Colleen songs best. Away Pt III is thundering psych rock and my favorite thing to crank the volume and sing along. Imagine hearing it on a Jefferson Airplane album and how much better it would be. Here's a live video of Steppin' Time, which also totally rocks. Leviathan Song Pt II has the same basic sound as Run but they keep adding more musical complexity. And A Watery Down II is their longest song at 15 minutes, and not long enough. It's like a sequel to their second longest song, Water, but where Water reaches through your ears and pulls your heart out, A Watery Down II is undemanding and chill, like space lounge music. If Song For Baltimore is the sound of ascending to heaven, this is the sound of hanging out there. I thinkt the chorus is "We owe the night a dream / The tomb I lay upon."

Double Days I and II (2015)

The peak of Double Days I is a stunning cover of Black Sabbath's Planet Caravan, and there's also a good cover of Disintegration by the Cure. Double Days II has a celestial love song by Caleb, Magnetic Green, and three solid originals by Colleen. New Plan features a great spacy solo by a guest guitarist. Go See Boats is their most conventionally beautiful song yet, and my number one for 2015. And Time Stands Still is a hypnotic folk song that instead of building up slowly like usual, builds up all at once.

Human Adult Band split single (2015)

One dark and super-catchy song: Half Light Blues. Compare this to Past Time from 2006, where Colleen was so overflowing with creativity that she could come up with a 200 note vocal melody and only use it once. Now she and Caleb are so skilled as performers that they can milk 13 notes into a great song and make it sound easy. If Kurt Cobain were alive he would cover this.

Appendix 1: Calendar Playlist

February - No Gravity Blues
March - All Operations
April - Adversaries & Enemies
May - Destin Rain
June - Song For Baltimore
July - Oh Country
August - Time Stands Still
September - Graceless Lady
October - The Grove Is Hotter Than An Ocean's Oven
November - Leviathan Song Pt II
December - Water
January - The Mirror Like Sea

Appendix 2: top 30 Colleen songs

Song For Baltimore
Water
Oh Country
Destin Rain
Adversaries & Enemies
No Gravity Blues
Graceless Lady
Away Pt III
Past Time
The Grove...
Go See Boats
A Watery Down II
Run
Dead Song
The Queen And Her Court
Indang Pariman
All Operations
A Quiet Lousy Roar
Don't Trust The Ruin II
Leviathan Song Pt II
Half Light Blues
New Eyes
Never Let Me Go
Creepin Crazy Time
A Spiral Down
You Need Then It Comes
Everything Is Improving
Vitamin C
Squeeze Box
I Will Love You

Appendix 3: top ten Caleb songs

The Rise of Quinnisa Rose
Hangman
Don't Trust The Ruin
Sirens Knell
Sick With Information
She Said Nothing
Sovereignty You Bitch
Old Time Primitives
South Of Portland
Magnetic Green

Appendix 4: top ten albums

Big Blood and the Wicked Hex
Sew Your Wild Days Tour vol. 1
Unlikely Mothers
Space Gallery Jan. 27, 2007 Sahara Club Jan. 28, 2007
The Grove
Strange Maine 11.04.06
Big Blood and The Bleedin' Hearts
Double Days II
Fight For Your Dinner vol. I
Dead Songs

Appendix 5: covers wishlist

R.E.M. - Belong
Get Well Soon - If This Hat Is Missing I Have Gone Hunting
Gravenhurst - Black Holes In The Sand
Carissa's Wierd - Phantom Fireworks
Hawkwind - Infinity
R.E.M. - Underneath The Bunker
Norman Greenbaum - Spirit In The Sky
S.C.U.M. - Whitechapel
Trabant - Itt van, pedig senki se hívta
Camper Van Beethoven - Lulu Land
Gordon Lightfoot - Cobwebs and Dust
Chris Stamey - Something Came Over Me