Big Blood

Big Blood are Colleen Kinsella and Caleb Mulkerin who live in South Portland, Maine, where they make and record experimental music at home. They have made twenty-something records since 2006. The music is a vehicle for dealing with what is going on in their heads, which runs the gamut from friends they have lost, to frustrations during the day, and the larger world picture. Without sounding insincere, they make music for themselves, that at times can be wildly inconsistent.

In 2007, they released "The Grove" and in 2008 "Big Blood & The Bleedin' Hearts" on limited edition CDRs. That was at the height of the so-called "New Weird America" scene. Big Blood were at least geographically part of that New England flourishing, but while many of their contemporaries drew inspiration from the psychedelic and folk music free form scenes of the 60s and 70s, Big Blood generally revolved around more traditional song structures.

While we appreciate attempts at expanding the space of sonic possibilities for the sake of it, we have always reserved special admiration for those who can bang out a catchy three-minute song and yet still make it sound completely novel. Blow up the system within the system, if you will. Few, if any, do that better than Big Blood – and these two records are perfect testaments to that. Just try and listen to the opening track on "…The Bleedin' Hearts" where Caleb and Colleen's skewed voices and a horse-galloping guitar figure transform and uplift it from standard to something deeply original without compromising its fundamentally catchy qualities.