There was never anything wrong with ¡Simpatico!. For those of us who heard this second Velocity Girl album upon its release in 1994, the first reaction was, "Yes, this is what the band's supposed to sound like!" I always felt like Copacetic, the group's first full-length release from 1993, was oddly recorded and produced, to put it nicely. When the 2024 reimagining of Copacetic arrived, it was apparent that by revisiting the record, the group's own Archie Moore had revived it, giving it the spark it had always been missing.
¡Simpatico! from 1994 always had spark. Every individual cut on the record, reissued today in a superb remastered and expanded edition from Sub Pop, still feels like a single. The album is full of charm, and the kind of verve that makes it stand out as one of the best American indie records from the post-Nirvana boom years. Not only that, but it's quite possibly the strongest example to date of an American act cranking out such winning music that's clearly been inspired by British bands (and a few from New Zealand too). Which is to say that Velocity Girl, as far as this fan is concerned, did everything right on their sophomore effort.
Opening with the fuzzy blast of "Sorry Again", Velocity Girl roar out of the gate with a less muddied sound than on the tracks on the original issue of Copacetic only a year before. This one, and the endearingly ambling "I Can't Stop Smiling" are absolute pop gems, and clear highlights of this record. The tunes are put forward with the sort of easy confidence that indicated that 1994 was going to be the year that Velocity Girl found a whole lot of new fans. And they certainly did, partly thanks to that "I Can't Stop Smiling" prom-inspired video. The vibe found on those two singles takes a harder turn on the punchy "Drug Girls", and the insistent "The All-Consumer", a personal fave. Sarah Shannon shines on "Tripping Wires", a number which contains one of her most appealing vocal performances with this band, while "Labrador" reminds fans that this was indeed sort of a shoegaze band.
I think that's why ¡Simpatico! works so well. There's such a deft blending of sub-genres here that the record still sort of stuns. Drawing from C86 stuff, Flying Nun classics, and the work of those contemporary peers on both sides of the Atlantic with amps cranked and pedals in place, Velocity Girl pulled a bunch of influences together to make something distinctly their own, a bright spot in American indie at the time. The tragic death of Kurt Cobain didn't kill off grunge. And so many American indie acts, signed after the success of Nirvana's 1991 breakthrough, were still around, fizzling out or trying to translate a a very specific underground appeal to wider audiences. Remarkably, rather than lean into the harder, noisier elements of their early sound in an attempt to win over new shoegaze acolytes, Velocity Girl went a little pop in 1994, and that's what made ¡Simpatico! a wildly pleasing album. There is not a single dull moment here, and the album breezes along with a lot of the kind of enthusiasm in the musicianship which makes for great pop. Sure, you can hear stuff here that gets this lot lumped in with shoegaze era peers, but Velocity Girl were doing their own thing here, and doing it with a panache that their first album had been lacking.
Originally recored with Smiths producer John Porter, ¡Simpatico! is expanded in this 2026 edition with a bunch of bonus cuts. Fan favorite "Marzipan" is here, as are three winning covers: "Your Silent Face" (New Order), "Seven Seas" (Echo and the Bunnymen), and "You're So Good to Me" (The Beach Boys). Those are all great, of course, but also of interest is a drum machine-aided version of "Labrador", which, while charming, wasn't the sort of thing in 1994 that was going to put drummer Jim Spellman out of a job. The brash hooks of "Breaking Lines" make that rarity another winner here. And of course, this record, now remastered, has never sounded this good, which is really saying something about an album where the hooks were always so big, bright, and vibrant.
¡Simpatico! still charms enormously, with the tunes having a lightness about them that's entirely different than what came before. Full of the promise of pop, and having the youthful confidence to put that into action, Velocity Girl made their very best music in 1994 on ¡Simpatico!.
The new remastered and expanded edition of ¡Simpatico! by Velocity Girl is out today via Sub Pop.
[Photo: Velocity Girl]