Search - Dqe :: Queen of Mean

Rock_n_roll 4-ever

T. Terrill | Atlanta, GA USA | 03/20/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Most women are complex. Women who rock even more so. Women who are bipolar AND rock (85% of Pulitzer Prize winning poets are manic-depressive) even MORE so.DQE's Grace Braun is no exception. With her `fella' (and musical soul mate) Dougan on drums, she rocks so crazy-modern, wild-eyed and timeless that I believe it is in her tealeaves to remain infamous and fortunately separate from the fragile bouquet that seems to represent contemporary `women's' music. She's a stud, a 21st Century Rockabilly Girl Wonder. Sometimes dressed like hooker, sometimes like a Sunday school teacher, her tranced-out, head shaking, eye rolling live shows are life altering and admirably full of the old fashioned notion that it's the duty of those in show biz not to bring your audience down, but to lift them up, up, up!Simple, familiar, possessed and guitar strung-upside-down-original, this is an album of 19 `whoopin-it-up' 2 minute songs that resemble premium, pre-rockabilly era Cracker Jack prizes, not this runny temporary tattoo [stuff] you find at the bottom of the box these days. These songs make you feel like a REAL winner.It's Saturday night. Ignore that porn spam (or not..;) and spin "The Queen of Mean"."

Best Songwriter going?

singmebackhome | Macon, GA | 08/04/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The best songwriters going right now are Iris Dement, Richard Buckner, and Grace Braun, who now balances a solo career and her legendary band DQE. Her last album was the country and folk laced It Won't Hurt, which had more than one bona fide all-time classic song. Queen Of Mean is a return to the more rock and punk side of her earlier DQE days but with no let up in the quality of her songs- there are still songs you could whittle down around the campfire. And her melodies on some songs are major-league hooky. If the Ramones had recorded a folk album it might sound like this. Iris, Buckner and Braun are very dissimilar, but they share a common thread of being great songwriters, and with this album, I think Grace takes the lead."