FEATURE: Spotlight: Queen Kwong — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Laura-Mary Carter

Queen Kwong

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AN is artist I have known about…

PHOTO CREDIT: Laura-Mary Carter

for a while now, Queen Kwong’s new album, Couples Only, is released on 29th July. It is one that I would urge everyone to check out and order. An amazing artist who has made such a personal and powerful album, the circumstances around the time and what she had to deal with and absorb makes the music truly remarkable and brave:

“Carré Callaway aka Queen Kwong returns for her third and most fiercely visceral album to date. Produced by Joe Cardamone (The Icarus Line) and featuring guest performances by members of Swans, The Cure, and Blood Red Shoes, Couples Only is a truly defiant statement.

A few years ago, Carré Kwong Callaway—aka Queen Kwong—was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis and told she may only have a decade left to live. Couples Only it’s an outpouring of pure feeling and visceral thought that captures every emotion that comes with both the grieving and recovery process. It's a fearless account of facing the worst betrayals and accepting the deepest losses. It's the realisation of one's mortality and the impermanence of everything we know and cherish. But, ultimately, it’s a testament to the endurance of the human spirit. Because while this record is unashamedly about the darkest period of Carré’s life, it doesn’t wallow. It can be accusatory and violent, but there's no time wasted on self-pity.

From the razor sharp midnight swagger of “I Know Who You Are” to the post modern doo-wop of “On The Run” and the Lynch-ian pop hooks of closer “Without You, Whatever" Couples Only is a fearless testament of endurance and survival in the face of betrayal, loss, and mortality”.

I think that Queen Kwong is one of the most amazing artists on the scene. Some people may not have heard of her, so that is why I am including her in Spotlight. To give you more of an idea of what she is about and what went into Couples Only, I am going to source a few interviews from this year. BlackBook spoke with Queen Kwong back in April:

“Existing somewhere between a band and a solo project, Queen Kwong is actually the nom de guerre of Carré Kwong Callaway, the Los Angeles songstress who was thrust into the spotlight in 2005 when Trent Reznor discovered her seventeen-year-old self in a New Orleans recording studio. She suddenly found herself, under her birth name, opening for Nine Inch Nails‘ on their extensive 2005 With Teeth Tour. She disappeared for a spell, then re-emerged as Queen Kwong in 2009, and once again hit the road with NIN.

She released a series of EPs between 2013 and 2019, the last one coming a year after her diagnosis with cystic fibrosis. For those not familiar, it is a particularly horrifying condition, which causes persistent lung infections, significant digestive problems and, well…can cause the sufferer bouts of not actually being able to breath properly.

Many of the songs on Couples Only address how her illness quickly caused the deterioration and eventual breakup of her marriage to a famous rock guitarist, whom she had wed in 2016. The first single, ‘I Know Who You Are’ is an absolute shiver-inducing stunner, with its haunted, slow-build introduction, jarringly jagged grooves, and thundering, industrial-punk sonics.

But most revealingly, in her eerily double-tracked voice, she recites lyrics about a pattern of taking up with toxic people – a stark confessional and catharsis at once. In a way it actually feels like an exorcism…except that the demons are very human ones. Fittingly, the accompanying video is an homage to an infamous Isabelle Adjani scene from the the 1981 film Possession.

We caught up with her to take a deep dive into what it all means, and how music may have just genuinely pulled her back from the brink.

Your new album was inspired by the splitting up of your marriage? Was it difficult to revisit that, or did you find it cathartic?

Both. For a long time, I did everything I could to not feel or think about it, just so I could get through it. By the time I started recording, I had stored all of those feelings inside of me and I was physically and mentally maxed out because of it. So recording the album was a necessary purge. It was freeing.

The lyrics to ‘I Know Who You Are’ seems to be about someone who willingly takes up with toxic people. Is that autobiographical?

Because writing and playing music are such coping mechanisms for me, everything I do is deeply personal and autobiographical in some way. ‘I Know Who You Are’ is an acknowledgment of repeating patterns I found myself in with fake, parasitic people – personally and professionally. People who play a part and get away with bad behavior. People who are enabled by the sycophants who surround them. The song calls out those people and acknowledges how I see them and I know them and I no longer am willing to stay quiet about it.

You chose demonic possession as the touchstone for the video. Is there something you’re trying to tell us?

I chose to use the tunnel scene from the movie Possession as the inspiration for the video because to me, it’s not about being possessed by a supernatural demon but being possessed by the emotions you feel while navigating a toxic relationship, from start to finish. Beginning with the giddiness and the “high” of falling in love, then experiencing the betrayal and disillusionment, the gas-lighting that causes the self-questioning (Am I the “crazy bitch”?), and then ultimately the relief and freedom you feel when you surface at the other side.

Did you actually have fun making the video, or was it a rather unsettling experience?

To be honest, making art isn’t about having fun for me; that’s never been a priority, haha. The intention is always to express myself in a way that challenges me as an artist and that’s cathartic enough to be therapeutic. Though shooting this video was pretty grueling, especially physically, we did it so fast that there wasn’t much time to dwell on what I was feeling. I just entered a flow state and got it done.

There’s a lot going on on the new record sonically. What were some of the things you were inspired by sound-wise during the writing and recording of Couples Only?

Because I don’t pre-write any material before recording, there’s not really a plan when it comes to what I want something to sound like. The only inspiration is whatever emotions surface in the moment. Listening back to the record now, everything is sonically aligned with those emotions. Screaming guitars that sound like screaming voices, modulating synths that cause tension and discomfort, birds chirping in the backyard leaking into the one and only vocal take I could muster before tears got in the way…

What are some of the most meaningful songs for you on the album?

‘Mourning Song’ and ‘Sad Man’ are the highlights for me. The former was the first track I recorded for Couples Only and it’s the most personal. If there’s one song that says everything I needed to say, it’s that one. On the other hand, ‘Sad Man’ is kind of self-deprecating and humorous, which I think is essential to have on a record like this. Both are brutally honest but represent different sides of my life”.

An album that is going to get so much love when it comes out, Couples Only is going to announce Queen Kwong as a huge artist that will go very far indeed. Going back to May, VENTS MAGAZINE spent some time with Queen Kwong. Hearing her answer to a question about how her third album differs from her first two is really interesting:

“Your home label for Couples Only is with Sonic Ritual. What does Sonic Ritual bring to the table for you and your music that no other label can?

They don’t enforce any creative boundaries. That’s huge. Practically unheard of when it comes to a label. They take what I already do and see the potential in that without trying to make it into something else. I couldn’t imagine a better label, especially for this record and the kind of artist I am.

Can we look forward to seeing you on tour in the weeks and months to come?

Hopefully in the fall/winter I’ll be touring in the UK/EU. Plans are in motion but I think I’m still in the “believe it when I see it” mode just because COVID has really thrown everyone for a loop.
Musically, who inspires you at the moment?

A$AP Rocky and Kendrick Lamar are on repeat at the moment. Both of their latest releases are so good and innovative. Hip hop is the new punk rock.
How did you land on the path of being such an accomplished musical artist? Is there a secret origin story you could share with us?

I’ve had to redefine what success and accomplishment means to me many times. I think focusing on making honest art and not caring about how successful that art is going to be is the key to staying motivated as an artist, because it’s a constant struggle and never-ending slog in one way or another. I’m the kind of person who is never satisfied, always hungry for a challenge and thrives off of pushing boundaries. Those aspects of my personality have definitely helped keep my heart in music.

Couples Only is your third album. How is it similar to the first two? How is it different?

The producer (Joe Cardamone) and our creative process has remained the same for all three records but since this is the third record, I was able to tap into that process more easily and make it more sonically polished. It helped to have Tchad Blake mix it too because he was able to wrangle the chaos a bit. Every song was written on the spot while recording in the studio but this one is less messy and not as lo-fi as the first. It’s a stream of consciousness but the stream has been refined, if that makes any sense. Also, musically, Couples Only has more electronic elements like programmed drums and synths than the previous two”.

Before finishing up, there is another interview that I want to bring in. CLASH chatted with Queen Kwong earlier this month. It is so remarkable and moving hearing what she had to endure and face before and during the recording of Couples Only:

“When considering the circumstances surrounding ‘Couples Only’, it’s shocking that the album was ever even completed. The release touches on Callaway’s divorce, the life-changing impact of a cystic fibrosis diagnosis, and the limbo of being ejected from one’s marital home – as Callaway reels off the details of events that inspired this record, you can’t help but feel something inside of you ache. Speaking on the recording process, Callaway admits that “it was intense.” But her recording approach helped numb some of the possible sting; “luckily I record really fast, so I didn’t have to, you know… linger. It was really emotional, but we kept things moving.”

This quick approach also allowed the tracks to come out as raw as possible; “Joe Cardamone, my producer, has known me since I was 18, so I didn’t feel the need to be ‘careful’; I didn’t try to be poetic or beat around the bush. I just did it, and whatever came out, we just let it be. I didn’t want to go back and edit. There were some songs where I only did one take, I wasn’t able to do it again… But then I have to learn them again properly for shows – learn the lyrics and do all that. So I’m sure that will be… an experience.”

For Callaway, telling the truth was all that mattered. “Going through the divorce and the backlash of it all, it was really important for me to hold on to what the truth actually was,” Callaway notes. “For a couple of years I was being told that I was crazy, or I was lying – this was kind of my only way of speaking my truth. I needed to make a point of, like, ‘I know what happened’, pulling direct quotes like ‘you mean bitch’ on ‘EMDR ATM’, literal lines I had been told. So I think in that way, being blunt was really effective, because it’s just kind of keeping a record of what actually happened, you know?”

‘Couples Only’ doesn’t ask its listener to read between the lines – it forces them to acknowledge the reality of Callaway’s experiences. It’s not a comfortable listen by any means, and Callaway is well aware of this; “It wasn’t comfortable to record, and it’s not a comfortable listen… but, you know, it was uncomfortable for me to go through – coming out of a divorce, with divorce lawyers and people judging me for telling the truth. People kept saying ‘do you really want to talk about that?, ‘why do you want to make trouble?’ or ‘why do you want to stir the pot?’”

“But… these things happened to me,” Callaway takes a moment to emphasise. “This all happened, I had to live through it – but people are always like ‘oh, but you’re making people uncomfortable by talking about it.’ And I think, as a woman, you just get used to living in discomfort for the sake of other people’s comfort levels; you avoid being confrontational, you never make a scene. It just got to the point where I knew I was being quiet for other people’s comfort, and I was about to burst. There was a year or two where I didn’t say anything – but then I was like ‘not anymore.’”

Rather than whimper in fear, Callaway is determined to make as much noise as possible. While Queen Kwong’s style is impossible to pin down, a thread of heavy, jagged rock and experimentation has always been a key element. ‘Couples Only’ takes a different sonic route than previous releases, but that heaviness is still blisteringly clear – and, in terms of lyrical content and emotional drive, the album is her heaviest yet. “On the surface, sonically speaking, this record isn’t as heavy or as aggressive as some of the previous stuff I’ve released. But, by saying the opposite, it means that you actually listened,” Callaway says. “I think, if you just listen, surface level, to the music and not really pay attention, it isn’t as heavy or aggressive as stuff on the previous two LPs, but I think it is a lot heavier in terms of content and themes – and there was no way to get around that.”

Callaway reflects on one of the toughest phases that fed into the creation of this record, harking back to touring in 2018. “There was one show with such bad feedback. It was like the highest pitch – my guitarist actually threw up afterwards. Like, my teeth hurt, that’s how bad it was,” Callaway recalls. “That whole tour was a big blur to me – it was literally when my marriage was ending. I think I really put my bands through a lot on that tour because I was literally like, sobbing all the time. I was a nightmare. They had to carry me – sometimes literally, physically carry me – through that tour.”

“The whole time, I just wanted to go home and save my life – it was like watching my home burning to the ground, but I couldn’t do anything about it,” Callaway admits. “I was on the other side of the world when everything was falling apart. Finding out about all this betrayal, cheating – it was horrendous. I felt like I wanted to save my life, save my marriage, but it wasn’t possible”.

If you have not heard of Queen Kwong and Couples Only is your introduction, go and hear the album (when it arrives on 29th July). Although she has been making music for a while, I just know that we will be hearing from this amazing artist…