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Don’t Trust The Ruin

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Big Blood, “Electric Voyeur” (Don’t Trust The Ruin, 2024)

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This delightful end-of-year surprise is the culmination of a decade-long project in which Colleen Kinsella and Caleb Mulkerin devoted themselves to building (and learning to play) their own homemade electronic instruments. In keeping with the homespun/primitive electronics nature of the project, the duo largely avoided using the internet as a resource and instead consulted books and other instrument builders for guidance and inspiration (though some exceptions were admittedly made). That purist approach extends to the recordings as well, as the duo constrained themselves to only Kinsella’s voice and their self-built instruments for every song except for one very catchy exception (“For Real,” which features some synth from guest Chris Livengood). Unsurprisingly, the end result of that approach is a bit of a significant stylistic detour for the band, blurring together the wonky, eclectic charm of Silver Apples with an impressionist strain of siren song psychedelia.

There is a video on Big Blood’s Youtube channel of Mulkerin performing an early version of “Came To Life” that provides a lot of insight into the scope and tone of this project, as it shows him patiently manipulating a wall of lights, dials, and wires to shape the piece’s insistently driving mutant motorik groove. Then, he briefly disappears from the frame and returns wearing some kind of repurposed marching band helmet fitted with dials that trigger streaking, spacey bloops as he moves around the room. The video conveys two very important things: 1) technology-wise, the duo’s self-built instruments have probably shot them back in time to the late ’60s, and 2) there was definitely an element of kitschy fun to the project.

Yet another key bit of information is that the electronics definitely take center stage for the most part, as Colleen Kinsella’s vocals often feel like a disconnected, dreamlike element that floats, dissolves, and lingers like a psychotropic haze. In fact, it frequently sounds like she is singing a hymn-like a capella piece in one room while clanking, blurting, and primitive electronic grooves bleed in from another. There are exceptions, however, such as the layered and swooping vocal harmonies of “Who Lives?” or the bubbly electro-pop fun of would-be single “For Real.” I bring that up primarily because Big Blood also released a companion instrumental version of this album that is every bit as good as the vocal version.  Notably, the instrumentals are not dubbed-out remixes, but instead fill the void of the missing vocals with different electronic elements. Since most of the songs are not exactly songs in the first place, it genuinely does not feel like anything crucial is missing.

On the poppier end of the spectrum, the aforementioned “For Real” is an obvious highlight, as it features both an endearingly bouncy groove and Livengood’s warmly New Romantic synth hook, but the Magazine-esque goth-pop of “Color of The Moment” is a gem as well. The deceptively titled “Middle of a Party” could arguably be considered poppy as well, but only if the party in question was thrown by ghosts, robots, and robot ghosts. There are also a number of cool songs that feel like a left-field nod to ’60s exotica albums, such as the simmering and haunted nocturnal tropical ambiance of “Night Walk.” Beyond that, there is a third category of pieces that I would loosely describe as “lurching nightmarish mindfuckery.” That side is best embodied by “Floating from Xanthi II (giant fir),” which resembles a heaving Silver Apples-style groove mingled with a seance gone very wrong (eerie Theremin-like howls, chopped and distorted vocals). Elsewhere, “Night Stalk” offers a much kitschier-sounding nightmare that approximates Throbbing Gristle trying their hand at a clunkily groovy giallo score.

Notably, all of the pieces tend to be quite brief, as the inherent limitations of the gear mean that every song is essentially built from a single shifting groove, but Mulkerin and Kinsella do a fine job of never overstaying their welcome and the songs flow into one another quite nicely. More importantly, Electric Voyeur is one hell of a unique, eclectic, and charming album. In fact, I think I even prefer the more purist instrumental versions of these pieces to their vocal versions. Of course, given the extreme constraints involved, neither of the Electric Voyeur options would be a representative or ideal entry point into Big Blood’s oft-wonderful discography, but this labor-of-love curveball is quite a divergent and welcome treat for already devoted fans like myself.

Listen here.

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Big Blood, “Fight For Your Dinner II” (Don’t Trust The Ruin, 2022)

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I was not expecting 2014’s odds n’ ends collection Fight for Your Dinner to ever have a sequel, so this latest batch of eclectic covers, one-off experiments, unusual collaborations, and orphaned songs came as a very pleasant New Year’s Eve surprise last December. While the covers are a bit less leftfield this time around (no Missy Elliott), they compensate by being even better, as the duo’s sublime interpretation of two ’80s Prince classics is one of the best goddamn things that they have ever recorded. The album also features one hell of an excellent tribute to the late Jack Rose, reworkings of songs by Pixies and Amon Düül II, a homemade electronics experiment, and a six-year-old’s bold vision for the perfect pop song. 

Given the album’s freewheeling randomness and the focus upon previously unreleased pieces, one could be forgiven for thinking that Fight For Your Dinner II is strictly one for the band’s most devout fans, but it is extremely rare for Big Blood to release anything that does not feature at least one absolutely essential song and this one has several (as well as some great cover art). Of course, I am admittedly speaking as one of the aforementioned “most devout fans,” but I still believe it is an objective fact that there is an impressive amount of revelatory material here. And that anyone left cold by the “When Doves Cry/I Would Die For You” cover should be extremely concerned that their ears may be broken.

The album kicks off in somewhat modest fashion with a couple of previously released rarities from the project’s substantial discography: the stomping “Half Light Blues” (from a 7″ split lathe with Human Adult Band) and the lurching electronic weirdness of “Floating from Xanthi,” which was originally issued with a Greek fanzine (LUNG). That second piece is an interesting one, as it originates from a planned/unfinished album of works made using homemade electronics and calls to mind a spirited Big Blood/Silver Apples mash-up. 

For the most part, however, most of the strongest songs on this collection are covers, which is a bit of a surprise, given how much I love generally Colleen Kinsella and Caleb Mulkerin’s songwriting. The pair do knock it out of the park with one original piece though, as “The Fox and The Rose” beautifully memorizes Jack Rose and a hapless fox with a classic Fire on Fire-style feast of vocal harmonies, fingerpicked acoustic guitars, backwards melodies, and psych-damaged guitar noise. I am frankly surprised it managed to elude release until now, as it feels like an instant stone-cold classic in the Big Blood canon.

I am less bowled over by the Amon Düül II cover that follows, as the duo excised one of the best parts of the song (the drums) in favor of a straightforward chug, but I may be in minority on that, as I have seen more than one person proclaim it to be the single best song on the album. Unfortunately, that honor was already decisively claimed by the sensuous drone-trance shimmer of the double Prince cover (recorded the night the duo learned of his death, no less). 

Transforming an unimprovable/brilliant/perfect song (“When Doves Cry”) into a completely different great song is quite an impressive feat, yet Big Blood work a different kind of killer alchemy with Pixies’ “Velouria,” transforming a song I basically remembered only as a pleasantly catchy single into a beautifully frayed, intimate, and poignant piano ballad. By my count, that adds up to three top-tier Big Blood songs buried in a ten-song collection of ostensible vault scrapings, but the album has one more big surprise to offer as well, as it closes with a young Quinnisa’s breathless foray into home-recorded autotune disco (“she insisted that I make her sound like the ‘robots’ she heard on the radio”).

sounds can be found here

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Big Blood, “Deep Maine” (Don’t Trust The Ruin, 2022)

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I was starting to get a little worried about Big Blood, as they went almost all of 2019 without releasing any new music. Thankfully, however, they were just quietly amassing material for not one but TWO new albums to be released in rapid succession. The first of the pair is this one, a self-released duo recording that surfaced digitally at the end of December. Obviously, they chose to give the more rocking family affair Do You Want to Have A Skeleton Dream? the more high-profile release, but that does not necessarily mean that that album got all the best songs. In fact, there are a couple of absolutely beautiful pieces on this more modest, stripped-down and fitfully ballad-centered release. Consequently, I have no doubt that there will someday be a deluxe reissue in Deep Maine‘s future, as it certainly deserves it. Until then, however, “A Message Sent” is an instant classic no matter which format it appears in.

I first came to Big Blood after falling in love with Fire on Fire, as the line separating the two projects was initially quite a blurry one: the ragged, psych-damaged folk aesthetic and principle songwriters were the same (Caleb Mulkerin and Colleen Kinsella), but Fire on Fire featured an expanded ensemble of talented collaborators. Naturally, having Micah Blue Smaldone and some former Cerberus Shoal bandmates along for the ride yielded some great results, yet the primary appeal of both bands has always been the songwriting. While Mulkerin and Kinsella’s talents in that regard have certainly not dimmed over the last decade or so, this project has evolved into quite an idiosyncratic, unpredictable, and stylistically fluid endeavor in recent years that can be quite a different animal than either Fire on Fire or early Big Blood.

I am certainly happy to follow Kinsella and Mulkerin wherever their mercurial muse leads them, but the diverging paths that their albums have taken is a significant one: some albums are thematically focused conceptual or aesthetic statements and some are just straightforward collections of good songs that harken back to their earlier strain of outsider Americana. Deep Maine is mostly an album that falls in the latter category, albeit one with some occasional detours and eccentricities. The opening “Hail the Happy Hourlings” is an especially strong example of the skewed vision that the duo brings to traditional folk/country fare, as Kinsella’s lovely, lilting vocals and the simple, bittersweet piano melody are embellished with a persistently mooing cow and a woozy flute motif. It has all the hooks and melody I would expect from a classic country song, but it feels like that song is bleeding into a considerably weirder dream or hallucination without sacrificing any of its poignancy or soul.

That countrified heartache gives way to more rousing fare with the following “Baby Eyes,” as Kinsella and Mulkerin’s harmonized vocals lead an amiably rolling and anthemic sing-along. It is a bit too breezy to rank among my favorite Big Blood songs, but it is illustrative of some of the details that make the duo such a delightful and unique creative force. Beyond the pair’s obvious talent for crafting strong hooks, “Baby Eyes” strikes a perfect balance of playful experimentation and rough, homespun charm that can only come from years of comfortably recording together. Mulkerin and Kinsella have a real genius for making their music feel wonderfully loose, unpretentious, and effortless: “Baby Eyes” is packed with cool melodic interplay, inventive arrangement flourishes, and endearing eccentricities (the wonderfully warbling backing vocals), yet it has the casual spontaneity of a song that was bashed out in a single take with no overdubs. As much as I appreciate all of those details, however, the songs themselves always remain the essence of Big Blood’s greatness (though the duo’s unerring instinct for not smothering those songs in overproduction or perfectionism is crucial too).

In keeping with that sentiment, my favorite piece on the album is probably the most direct and minimal one of all, as “A Message Sent” is essentially just a vocal melody and a few simple piano chords. While those two elements are all Mulkerin and Kinsella need to conjure up an achingly beautiful reverie, the piece is elevated by some wonderful vocal harmonies as well as some great psychedelic flourishes in the periphery (backwards guitars, orchestral swells). Given the conspicuous absence of any country or folk influence, it almost sounds like a Flaming Lips song, but more like a highly sought-after demo version of a beloved classic than something that would wind up on a polished formal album.

The album’s second half, on the other hand, is a considerably more eclectic and abstract affair. The strongest (and most endearingly weird) piece is the Kinsella-sung “The Queen and Her Court II,” which features a sing-song melody that recalls a sea shanty or early English folk song. Aside from a subdued, winding organ melody, however, every other aspect of the piece is warped and hallucinatory: the vocals are distorted, the percussion is hollow and echoing, and a current of gurgling and smeared noises roils in the periphery. Elsewhere, the hypnotic repetition and mass vocals of “Serpent Skies” resemble a communal jam that some ’70s hippie cult might have recorded. That piece segues nicely into the lovely and meditative closer: a reverent cover of Lloyd Cheechoo’s bass-driven “James Bay” that transforms it into something approaching a hymn (Light In the Attic fans will likely recall the original from 2014’s Native North America).

To some degree, the small number of songs (seven) and the stylistic variety of Deep Maine give it the feeling of an odds-and-ends collection, but that actually works in its favor, as there is not much here that sounds like business-as-usual for Big Blood (except for perhaps “Time is Coming”). Also, Big Blood’s orphaned songs, digressions, and covers historically tend to be every bit as likable as their formal albums (sometimes more so).Consequently, Deep Maine is quite an enjoyable batch of songs that both explores some unfamiliar stylistic threads and sneaks in a few fresh classics in the process.

Samples can be found here.

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Big Blood, “Strange Maine 11.04.06” (Don’t Trust The Ruin, 2019)

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Caleb Mulkerin and Colleen Kinsella’s Big Blood project has consistently been one of the most delightfully unique and life-affirming bands in the American underground over the last decade or so. Admittedly, their major releases have been increasingly prickly, weird, and experimental in recent years, which likely explains why the duo are not nearly as appreciated as they should be: the current era is definitely not the easiest entry point for the curious. Prior to the run of ambitious concept albums that kicked off with 2013’s Radio Valkyrie, however, the duo self-released quite a transcendent run of brilliant songs on homemade CD-Rs. 

It is not an exaggeration to say that the ramshackle back porch psychedelia of those early years yielded some of the most beautiful songwriting that my ears have ever heard. This 2006 release is where that hot streak first began, preceding Fire on Fire’s brief but wonderful lifespan on Young God Records by a year. How they managed to be the driving creative force between two great bands at once is beyond me, but Mulkerin and Kinsella managed to churn out at least four stone-cold masterpieces in the span of two years and this was the first of them.

As is quite characteristic for Big Blood’s self-released albums, Strange Maine 11‚04.06, briefly appeared as a limited run of CDRs with screen-printed covers with only the most cryptic and minimal information provided therein (and it has only been available digitally ever since). According to the release notes, “these songs were written and recorded by Rose Philistine & Asian Mae together at home.” At other times, Big Blood has been described as a “phantom four piece of Asian Mae, Caleb Mulkerin, Rose Philistine and Colleen Kinsella [who] perform only as a duo. An intimate team, walking blind through each other’s songs presenting one of a kind recordings tailor-made to the night’s performance.”

Amusingly, I was not fooled by the phantom members or alter-egos, but I was fooled by the dates listed in the titles of several early albums. Mistakenly believing them to be live albums, I waited much longer to investigate both this release and Space Gallery Jan 27, 2007 than I should have. As it turns out, the date is just the night that the duo (and their phantom friends) recorded a particular batch of songs at home. I was also very surprised to learn that Mulkerin and Kinsella wrote songs separately, as the aesthetic of their early releases feels like an almost supernaturally vivid and focused channeling of a long folk tradition, albeit one filtered through an endearingly ragged and psych-damaged sensibility. Big Blood being half-rooted in the spirit realm seems almost apt and believable at times, as imagining two flesh-and-blood artists so uncontaminated by the modern world feels similarly improbable.

I suspect whoever initially wrote a particular song did not matter much by the time Big Blood was done working their dark country magic, as all of Strange Maine 11.04.06‘s seven pieces feel lived-in, timeless, and packed full of enough vocal harmonies to feel like a campfire sing-along. That said, the songs that prominently feature Mulkerin’s frayed yelp tend to be more hook-filled and fun ones, while Kinsella’s Siren-esque vocals tend to drive the more dark, moody, and unusual ones. 

Both sides yield their share of highlights, but the rolling and weirdly joyful ode to friendship “A Friendly Noose” is the closest thing to a great single here (despite a very non-pop layer of textural field recordings in the mix). That piece was later reprised in more raucous, stomping fashion on the first Fire on Fire EP as “Hangman,” which was a great move, as that incarnation is an absolute masterpiece. This one is good too, but it is just one part of a perfect run of fine songs, notable primarily for being the most straightforwardly hook-filled piece on the album (aside from perhaps the buoyantly clopping cowpunk of “Full of Smoke”).

The similarly countrified “Under The Concourse” is also a strong contender for that honor once it fully blossoms into its ragged group chorus. Those two skewed homages to classic county music almost come close to courting kitsch, but Mulkerin and Kinsella bring such a deep sincerity to them that they feel like they legitimately belong in the same continuum as folks like Hank Williams. “Full of Smoke” and “Under The Concourse” feel like the fruits of an alternate timeline in which the DNA of honky-tonk and early outlaw country became improbably and gloriously intertwined with that of The Incredible String Band.

While I love all of the songs in the catchier vein, it is the haunting and lovesick “Past Time” that hits the hardest and leaves the deepest impression, as Kinsella sensuously coos lines like “love made in a day, took a lifetime to recover” over a backdrop of minor key banjo arpeggios and subtly lysergic backwards guitar. It is a truly wonderful marriage of torch song, heavy psych, and traditional folk, sounding like an intensely soulful rendition of a heartbreaking ballad that Shirley Collins and Alan Lomax might have unearthed. Some of Kinsella’s other vocal performances are similarly powerful though, as the closing “Slumber Me” is eerily chant-like and ritualistic, while “A Quiet Lousy Roar” masterfully emphasizes the “strange” in Strange Maine.

Built from just a tom-tom and tambourine rhythm, the music of “A Quiet Lousy Roar” sounds plucked straight out of a burlesque show in ’50s Las Vegas, yet Kinsella’s trilling, distorted melody and the bizarre backing vocals make it feel like a feral Joanna Newsom was dropped into Twin Peaks. More than any other piece, “A Quiet Lousy Roar” showcases how truly eccentric and inventive Big Blood were at this stage, as the sole thread that runs through everything is the sense that I am hearing hallucinatory radio transmissions from the darker, weirder corners of an imaginary mid-20th century America.

To their eternal credit, Big Blood’s endlessly shifting vision has always remained a deeply singular one in the years since, but this early era will always be a particular favorite of mine and the reason lies in Mulkerin and Kinsella’s unerringly brilliant execution. While there were plenty of wonderfully unique, beautiful, and even ecstatic releases to emerge from America’s New Weird America/Freak Folk explosion in the late ’90s, I cannot think of any other artists who managed to combine the outré with casual looseness, homespun charm, strong melodic sensibility, and skilled songcraft nearly as organically as Big Blood did on Strange Maine 11.04.06 and its immediate successors. This is a great album by a great band.

Samples can be found here.

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Big Blood, “Radio Valkyrie 1905-1917” (Feeding Tube/Dontrustheruin, 2013)

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Colleen Kinsella and Caleb Mulkerin have been responsible for some of my favorite music for years, but Big Blood is a significantly weirder, more unpredictable, and prickly entity than the duo’s previous outlet, Fire on Fire. While they are almost always compelling and distinctive, Big Blood’s voluminous output, occasional shrillness, general inscrutability, and stylistic variability can make them a hard band to fully embrace. Fortunately, this gorgeous double LP captures captures Colleen and Caleb at their absolute best, occupying the bizarre, lonely nexus where Appalachian folk, ritual, sound art, vintage Egyptian pop, and deep psychedelia intersect.

This seems to be loose concept album of sorts, as the title and many of the songs make allusions to Yevgeny Zamyatin’s dystopian classic We, a novel that I have embarrassingly not yet read. Fortunately, my egregious literary ignorance does not inhibit my enjoyment of this effort at all, aside from perhaps making an already cryptic, arcane album slightly more so. Possible deeper meaning aside, Radio Valkyrie certainly sounds a lot like an otherworldly, late-night radio transmission, which is both thematically appropriate and eerily evocative. 

In some cases, that resemblance is quite overt, as swooping shortwave radio-like feedback appears in several songs (most prominently in “Into the Wild, Part I”) and there are a few ominous, tinny interludes on the first record that sound like a distant, distorted signal pregnant with menace. In other cases, the effect is achieved more subtly, as these songs all share a deeply hallucinatory, nocturnal feel.

Stylistically, however, Radio Valkyrie is all over the map, as the sole constant thread seems to be Colleen Kinsella’s ragged, unusual vocals (usually heard though a thin haze of static or distortion). As much as I enjoy Caleb’s own unique vocals (sort of a strangled hillbilly yelp), it is fitting that only Colleen sings here, as her Siren-esque, force-of-nature vocals are ideally suited for such a hazily unearthly suite of songs. Or, more accurately, “songs.” Despite being a double album, there are very few conventionally structured songs here, particularly on the second album: Radio Valkyrie leans very heavily on abstract collages and droning soundscapes. Fortunately, the few songs that do appear are almost invariably excellent and the surrounding instrumental interludes are so effectively moody and surreal that they could easily carry an album on their own.

The best pieces, of course, are the ones that sound like absolutely no one else. The most striking of those is probably “Sanati,” which seems to be a Layla Murad (or Leila Mourad) cover of sorts, though translations vary and I cannot read Arabic well enough to confirm that (or at all, actually). Regardless, I am sure it sounds nothing like the original, as this version is built upon little more than hollow, funeral procession percussion, a haze of uneasy feedback, and Kinsella’s possessed-sounding wails and chants. “Sirens Knell, Part II,” for its part, is even more brilliantly warped, sounding like an unholy collision of torch song; eerily dissonant Natural Snow Buildings-style flutes; backwards, wrong-sounding guitars; and a malfunctioning gramophone.

Of course, Radio Valkyrie is not without its flaws, but this is probably as close to a perfect album as anyone could expect from Big Blood and the “flaws” in question are mostly relative. For example, the opening “40 Days and 40 Nights” would probably be a highlight on any other album, but sounds too conventionally “Big Blood” to fit on such an otherwise ambitiously mind-bending effort as this one. 

I had a similar issue with the somewhat shrill sludge rock of “Everything is Improving.” It is not necessarily weak, but this is just not the ideal place for a stomping “rock” song with snarling wah-wah guitar. Conversely, however, there is absolutely no filler to be found anywhere and the two records are otherwise thoroughly unique, wonderful, coherent, immersive, complex, haunted-sounding, and totally brain-melting, which renders any minor wobbles fairly irrelevant. This is the album I have been waiting for from Caleb and Colleen: Radio Valkyrie is Big Blood’s masterpiece.

Listen here.