Our occasional series “Secret History” features profiles of classic D.C. albums as a way of looking back at the District’s contributions to music over time. In this installment, we revisit Velocity Girl’s ¡Simpatico! (Sub Pop, 1994).
Coalescing at the University of Maryland in the late ’80s, Velocity Girl specialized in winningly sharp indie pop steeped in resonant major chord melodies and spry, agile rhythms, with a solid grounding in the unabashedly catchy style of bands associated with the UK’s Postcard and New Zealand’s Flying Nun labels, the semi-psychedelic nostalgia of Paisley Underground groups like the Rain Parade and Dream Syndicate, and the exhilarating pop perfection of the best New Wave acts. Focused and concise, the best Velocity Girl is some of the best indie rock D.C. – or any other city – can claim to have produced in the last 20 years.
Velocity Girl’s approach set them apart from the heavy, hard-charging, politicized postpunk common to D.C. in the ’90s. Says guitarist Brian Nelson, “We found things like tunefulness, texture, and simple songcraft to be almost exotic because of their regional absence. We wanted to hear hollow body guitars feeding back open major chords through Fender amps.” Guitarist and vocalist Archie Moore adds, “There was almost no American pop-song oriented indie stuff to speak of [in D.C. at the time], so I’m pretty sure a lot of local rock bands and fans had no context for us, and regarded us early on as this goofy, cheery, sloppy group, and later as crassly commercial alternative wannabes.”
“I have an anecdote that sums up how I think the D.C. punk scene regarded us,” Moore continues. “It’s from my friend Mike, who’s in the metal band Darkest Hour. Before I met him, his band bought from [College Park music shop] Atomic Music a bass cabinet that had once belonged to Velocity Girl; the name was stenciled on the back. When they wanted to sell the cabinet back to Atomic, Atomic offered them $100. Mike joked, ‘But dude, this belonged to Velocity Girl.’ The Atomic dude joked back, ‘Okay, $50.’”
Stories like that one aside, Nelson thinks D.C.’s rich musical landscape allowed Velocity Girl space to fit in. “[Labels like] Slumberland, Simple Machines, Teenbeat, and DeSoto were all putting out records along side Dischord. That worked to everyone’s benefit. Being in any city where there’s such a strong interest in music, even if it’s not stylistically the same as where we were coming from, is a plus.”
Initially emerging as a noisy, shoegazer-ish outfit cranking out what Moore describes as a “murky noise rock, a sorta half-assed Sonic Youth sound,” Velocity Girl promptly turned their attention to the sunnier side of the street, cleaning up their approach and emphasizing tunefulness over distortion. While the Bob Weston-produced debut LP, Copacetic, is an impressive opening gambit, it’s the follow-up, 1994’s ¡Simpatico!, that best displays Velocity Girl’s powers, 12 tracks of unerringly impressive indie pop packed into just under 35 minutes.
