Andy Wang

Brooklyn's Sea Ray is one of the better bands poised to rise out of the rock resurgence that people are calling New York's Next Wave.

In fact, Sea Ray's song "Revelry" is the first and best track on Kanine Records compilation, "NY: The Next Wave," which also includes other up-and-comers like Elefant and Stellastarr*. When the band releases its lush full-length album, "Stars at Noon," in October, fans of melodic indie rock and shoegazer pop will likely compare the band to everybody from Ride and the Velvet Underground to the Stratford 4 and Interpol. Wow, people will think, here's another new wonderful New York band that has somehow emerged fully formed.

But Sea Ray isn't actually one of those bands that started looking for studio space after seeing the Strokes break through. And Sea Ray hasn't been hiding out either. The band has played about thirty shows all over NYC in the last three years alone. They go back even further than that.

"I don't know that we don't necessarily care," says keyboardist Jeff Sheinkopf when asked about how Sea Ray might be perceived, "but there's not really anything we can do, unless we were to walk on stage every time with a big sign that said `Sea Ray since 1997.' We just kind of do what we do and let people discover us, discover our music. It's new to them, and hopefully they'll in turn discover that we've doing this for the past number of years."

What the five guys and one gal in Sea Ray have done for years is create brilliant, reflective indie pop. Like its peers Longwave, Sea Ray is a New York band that often sounds like a moody but hopeful British band. It's as if the members want to reverb themselves into rapture or at least revelry, and they succeed. They've also got enough sweet, thoughtful ballads to fill the next two Blur records.

And while there are a handful of New York bands mining the same influences, partying like it's 1979, Sea Ray stands out with its full, almost orchestral sound, with keyboard and cello augmenting the guitars, bass and drums. The band has become part of what many are viewing as an important rock moment, but Sea Ray stands alone too.

"There are so many bands in New York, there'd be almost no way for everybody to come together and create some sort of family tree," singer/guitarist Jordan Warner says. "The attention on New York bands, I almost feel it more from people outside the city," Sheinkopf adds. "People who are always talking about the New York scene are always in other places. It's people in other countries who contact us. It's anywhere but New York."

He's got a valid point. Many New York bands are much bigger in Europe than they are in the East Village. Longwave is a fine band that's beloved by Chicago writer Jim DeRogatis, but they're not a huge deal in New York even though they've signed with RCA. Chicago Tribune music critic Greg Kot recently said Brooklyn's The National released one of the best records of the year, but most Brooklyn-based rock writers don't even know who The National is.

"Bands like Longwave and The National and hopefully us, they're just not that fashionable in a lot of ways," Warner says. "I feel like that might be the reason why there's not so much hype in the press [in New York]. I think their music is better than a lot of the bands that are getting a lot of play."

It's probably an oversimplification or even a cliché to point out that these bands focus more on song craft than image, but one thing that connects them is their attractive music and lack of rock-star attitudes. "That's definitely one approach to take to rock 'n' roll, to sort of cop an attitude," Warner says. "I don't really have a problem with that. It can be fun to watch. It can be pretty entertaining to talk to some of those people sometimes, but I have no interest in doing it myself."

Sea Ray once got some free jeans, which bassist I-Huei Go gave to his girlfriend because they didn't fit him, but they can't think of anything else that really qualifies them as rock stars. But that's just fine because the songs are memorable and the band's expectations fairly modest.

"Most of us sort of grew up on college rock, indie rock in the mid-nineties," Go says. "I think something that does sort of set us apart from the New York rock scene is that I don't think any of us had any intention or the ambition to be rock stars."

They'd all like to make a living playing music, of course, but it's not like their world will crumble if this doesn't happen. And given that they've already played with indie all-stars like Interpol, Yo La Tengo, The New Pornographers, the Walkmen, Broken Social Scene and too many others to mention, things haven't gone badly so far.

Success is "not always as accidental as I think it's often perceived," Sheinkopf says. "I think we're all pretty happy with being where we are on our own."

Searay opens for Snowglobe, August 7 at the Double Door, 1572 North Milwaukee, (773)489-3160.

(2003-08-05)

Also by Andy Wang

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