After a year of playing with each other, DU indie-rock band Specific Ocean has just released two new singles and is continuing to enlarge their presence in the Denver music scene. The band formed in September of 2014. Camilla Vaitaitis (Littleton, Colorado) and Alec Wenzel (Chicago) had separately been talking to vocalist and guitar player Greyson Elkins (Dripping Springs, Texas) about starting a band, and then drummer Clayton Vye (Newburyport, Massachusetts) and bassist Hudson Knott (Louisville, Colorado) joined that same month. But coming up with a name took a little longer. They had played multiple shows under a different name—Gongs, Foxtrot, Guise—each time before finally settling on a band name somewhat by accident.
“We played this house show and [Specific Ocean guitarist] Alec [Wenzel]’s roommate made a Facebook event for it that said it was called Specific Ocean album release party,” Vaitaitis (vocals and keyboards) said. “So at the show, people thought we were called Specific Ocean and they started chanting it, so we kept it.”
Four of the five members are jazz majors in the Lamont School of Music; Vaitaitis is a senior, Knott a sophomore, Vye a junior and Wenzel graduated in 2014. Elkins, however, is a music minor with a major in creative writing. Because of this, jazz is an influence on their music, but they draw from a broad range of sources including anything from singer-songwriter to psychedelic rock to funk.
“The broad label is indie rock, but we all come from such different influences. It’s kind of a culmination of everything,” Vaitaitis said.
“It’s kind of like this Frankenstein monster underneath the umbrella of indie rock,” Vye added.
All of these varied influences can be seen in the four singles that the band has released. “Ride” and “Over and Over” were released in July and “San Andreas” and “Strangers” came out on Nov. 5. The songs were all written at roughly the same time, but recorded separately. “Ride” and “Over and Over” were recorded at the Lamont School of Music, and the most recent two singles were recorded in the studio that Specific Ocean set up in the basement of their house. All of the members of Specific Ocean live together, except Knott.
“We moved into this house in July and have been slowly setting up a recording studio and working with some acts and the singles [released on Nov. 5] are the first release from that,” Elkins said. “We’re trying to think of a label name.”
Having a studio in their basement makes recording much easier, and the band is hoping to at least have an EP out sometime early next year, but balancing school and a band can be difficult at times.
“I think the hardest part is that we can’t move fast enough in the band, it [school] slows everything down,” Elkins said.
However, Specific Ocean is still playing shows and working on writing material. The band plays a lot of house shows, but plays in bars and clubs in the Denver area as well. While Specific Ocean is considering playing the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas, their main focus is on the Denver music scene.
Specific Ocean’s next show is Nov. 20 at The Toad Tavern in Littleton, Colorado. Tickets are $8 and can be bought online or at the door, but the show is 21 and over. Their music can be found on Bandcamp and SoundCloud.
