The Hong Kong
rock suey!
By Stephanie R. Myers and Tom O’Connell

The night before I first saw The Hong Kong play a live show, I had a rather vivid dream that the band had announced that lead singer Catherine Culpepper had been permanently replaced by Marilyn Manson. Hmm, odd, I thought in the dream. I also remember thinking that with this move, I supposed that they no longer had to worry about the comparisons to Blondie.
In reality, the band needn’t worry about either of these scenarios. Their live set – -no surprise here – -is neither Blondie- nor Manson-esque.

On the first day of spring, The Hong Kong took the stage at R&R with a statuesque black-and-gold-clad Culpepper controlling the reins. The rest of the band followed suit, also all in black, pitch-perfect and somehow managing to capture the audience’s attention as though each person in the crowd was trying to win a streetside shell game.
The Hong Kong--if it’s not redundant to say this about a band who’s already had an album produced by Ric Ocasek–is the next big thing. If you don’t believe me or Ocasek, then wait for a copy of “Slow Motion Gets Around,” which keyboardist Shawn King says is being shopped around since Ocasek’s record label, Inverse, is currently on hold. (“Rock The Faces” was their first album.)

Hooking up with Ocasek was sort of serendipitous, said King. “It was kinda crazy,” he said. “Ric just happened to pick up a copy of our first record, “Rock The Faces” at Other Music and liked it enough to gave us a call. Which was really pretty surreal.”To put it mildly. Then again, when you’re The Hong Kong, talent has a pretty big hand in helping out fate.

Since then, the band (Culpepper, King, Harold Griffin, Ted Casterline and Aaron Carroll) garnered some major attention when they played alongside Ric Ocasek at CBGB in September. But, Casterline notes, the band considered themselves fans before Ocasek entered the picture.
“When we took ‘Rock the Faces’ to get mastered, the guy asked us to name a band or record that we would want ours to sound like, and we immediately said The Cars,” Casterline said. “Ric likes simple, straight forward pop songs, played tightly. When we wrote ‘Mazerati,’ (from ‘Rock the Faces’) we wanted that first part to have a feeling like some of those early Cars songs. It's basically just me and Aaron playing, and I was using a pick and muting the strings. There's some handclaps in there, too.” Handclaps, check. Managing to segue the handclaps to total and utter bounciness, check. Infectiousness? God yes. Just try to repress the compulsive booty-shaking that “Galaxies” will inevitably bring on, especially if you’re lucky enough to catch it live, where the audience demographic is varied—to say the least.
“The people who come to see us completely changes from venue to venue,” King said. “Our fans range from 13-year-old skate kids to the creepiest old man ever...and more or less everyone in between.”
The Hong Kong’s musical and aesthetic panache—which seems effortless, for all intents and purposes it SHOULD be a carefully crafted elegance, just to be fair to the rest of the planet, who has to put some effort into puttin’ on the ritz.

“There seems to be a little more emphasis on “lookin’ sharp” and putting on a show these days,” King said of the New York music scene. “Which is a good thing... more bang for the buck.”
Cultivating originality helps when you’re drawing from a vast pool. In the band’s current heavy rotation these days, King noted, is the new Liars record, The Dramatics, Tapes and Tapes, Ariel Pink, Pharaoh Overlord, Spoon, Mississippi John Hurt, Bugskull, J Dilla, AC/DC, and Whitey.
“It really feels like the New York scene is evolving into something new,” King said. “It’s a lot less specifically new wave. It's exciting to see bands introduce new elements to their sound.”

The band recorded “Rock the Faces” in a “basement with no budget,” noted Casterline, so making the new album required somewhat of an adjustment. “The biggest challenge for us was working in a real studio, with an engineer and a producer,” Casterline said.
The rockin’ love child of this polygamous marriage, “Slow Motion Gets Around,” is vibrant and—if you’ll overlook the cliché—really does manage to hit all the high notes. And some of the emotional low notes too; the instant classic “Not Getting Better” brings to mind the intensity of “Is This What I Get For Loving You.” Interesting to find, then, that The Hong Kong are fans of both The Ronettes and Phil Spector.
“That song really evolved very quickly and organically for us, with everyone adding great elements,” King said. “I think it's the most successful track on the album.”

Lyrically, Casterline, added, the band goes through a two-pronged process. “I think the lyrics in our songs fall into two categories—linear/narrative songs and non-linear/stream of consciousness songs,” Casterline said. “It’s strange how certain melodies just lend themselves to lyrics, and with others it's a real struggle to fit the right words in. ‘Tongue Tied’ was really easy to write. All the words came out at once, and I was glad that there was a story there that people could relate to. We have a new song called ‘No Complaints’ that was the same way. I think I wrote all the words in a single sitting, although the story gets a bit abstract. Other songs, like ‘Something New,’ were more of a struggle, and required many re-drafts. A lot of the words in that one were snippets from things I heard on the news or talk shows.”
So, back to the inevitable Blondie comparisons. Judgment of well-meaning but lazy critics or is there a grain of truth to the supposed likeness?
“We're a bunch of dudes playing pop, wearing black with a blonde singer—so visually we're definitely in ‘that spectrum,’” King said. “Vocally Catherine has similarities to Debbie Harry, but musically we're coming from a different place. Blondie really was and is an amazing band, so the comparisons are flattering. It would be a different story if they were saying that we were similar to Taylor Dayne or Samantha Fox or even Russell Crowe’s band... then I'd be confused.”