The Bollard Bulletin for April 21, 2025
Local Music Monday: Cryin Caleb, blues-punk prophet of doom
Local Music Monday
One day late last month, hardcore punk turned outlaw bluesman Caleb Aaron Coulthard, who performs as Cryin Caleb, drove from Maine to a music studio outside Boston and cut 11 tracks to warn humanity of our imminent doom. Recorded live, with Caleb growlin’ and howlin’, kicking drums and tambourines, and about strangling a distortedly loud electric guitar, the session was released as Coldheart Vol. 1, subtitled, Absurd Incredible Tragic.
It blasts off with a banger, the chugging instrumental “Got a Light?” And there are a few other songs not entirely about existential dread, like the wistful cover of Jimmie Rodgers’ “My Old Pal” that ends the session (a tribute to Caleb’s friend and former Down to Kill bandmate Barney Odette, who passed last year), and an old Vaudeville number, “Oh, How She Dances!” The country twanger “Turned Loose,” about loneliness, offers this Cash-worthy chorus: “I’ve been turned loose so many times / I can’t be tied down / Yet I always stick around.”
But mostly, this grizzled troubadour is here to tell us our modern lives are meaningless and civilization is sprinting headlong into oblivion. “I know that life can be exhausting,” Caleb sings on the second track, “Through the Day,” “But I take comfort from this thought / That in the end, there’s really nothing out there / Where’s the spirit guiding us?”
Two parts of a song titled “Sad Sci-Fi,” subtitled “Despair” and “Forever,” put our plight in the perspective of a godless cosmos. “No one is coming to save us / No one is coming to care,” he declares on the first part. “No one is coming to stop us / No one is coming to collect.”
On “Hush Money,” a psychobilly rant about our burning world, Caleb laments, “Now we’re searching through the mist / Looking for a home that no longer exists / Running ourselves right off the cliff / Nothing is ours / Everything just is.” The ballad “To Live and Love in the Shadow of Fear” attempts to line a dark cloud of nihilism with some human warmth. “The future is silence and it’s coooool / It’s a hostile world where we won’t belong / So let’s spend the night doing those things we so love to do / Like watching movies and telling jokes.”
Caleb isn’t wrong; he’s just jaded. There’s obviously a “spirit” guiding us: the human spirit of love and empathy that compels him to protest its relative absence in our society in the first place. A true nihilist wouldn’t bother to create a musical persona, write and record songs, and play shows to share them with others. Yes, there’s absurdity and tragedy all around us, but there’s also the incredible will to rebel against all odds and implore others to find a saner way. This is one such rebel record, and a kick-ass one, at that.
Cryin Caleb plays Novel (643 Congress St., Portland) on Sat., April 26, at 7:30 p.m., with psych-folk solo act Draudiga. (a.k.a. Reesa Wood, former vocalist of noise-metal band Cadaverette). Tix: $5 (all ages).
Highlight
“Mad props,” as the cool kids used to say, to the crew at Portland Noise, who continue to post full local music listings for the Portland area. That’s where I saw that longtime local cover-rock performer Ben Kilcollins is playing tonight at Smoked (951 Forest Ave., Portland), the BBQ ’n’ beer joint celebrating its first anniversary this month. During his free (and all-ages) “Mixology Monday” set from 6-9 p.m., they’ll also be promoting drinks made with Portland Distilling Company’s Goldie’s Gin. Here’s hoping Kilcollins has a cover of Mojo Nixon’s “Gin Guzzlin’ Frenzy” up his sleeve…