It turned out that Queen Kwong was kind of a princess with an aggressive guitar and a bold attitude. The trio – sure, Carré Callaway was not playing alone but was surrounded by a bassist and a drummer – was playing at Club Moscow, or Boardner’s Wednesday nights, and the three of them engaged right away the public in their raging and loud rock’ n roll.
But it was in fact Carré Callaway who showed right away a strong stage presence with her angry vocals over a raw and dark sound that was reminiscent of big acts,… may be Queens of the Stone Age came to my mind, or even Nirvana!! Wait, how old is she? She was tearing, shredding, rolling on stage and making aggressive moves, leaning down to the crowd while screaming her vocals, ready to jump all teeth outside. OK, I got it, she is that really pretty girl who wants to play it dirty by wearing a t-shirt full of holes and making that unpolished and bleak sound.
Except that she is not playing anything: at 17, Callaway was discovered by Trent Reznor, who had her support his band on the ‘With Teeth’ tour. Yes, she did the big arena thing, alone with her guitar, opening for Nine Inch Nails in 2005.
On Wednesday night, trio was loud, and she playing these energetic and powerful riffs, visceral and almost brutal at times, with enough distortion and reverb to make us think it was pure testosterone-fueled, but no all this was coming from this thin pretty female with a badass attitude and a restless guitar who wanted to save rock’ n roll.
Anyway, she is a sweetheart, reading a blog listing her most-loved ten things, there were, among other things, cats (her band logo is a cat sitting at the top of a gun), Iggy Pop, Nick Cave and chocolate. I think we could get along pretty great.