"Sorry Again"
!Simpatico!
While discussing the best songs of the 90s, the conversation will inevitably include obvious choices like Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit", Radiohead's "Karma Police" and Oasis' "Wonderwall". Depending on where tastes lie, you may also hear Pulp's "Common People", R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion" or even Pavement's "Gold Soundz" as Pitchfork chose.
However, to me, there was always one song that I considered one of the very best of the decade that never got its proper due: "Sorry Again" by DC's Velocity Girl.
Velocity Girl formed in Maryland in 1989, but were mainly known as a DC band because there was no such thing as a Baltimore music scene. Seriously, I can't even name another band from Maryland except for Good Charlotte, and let's face it - they hardly qualify as a band.
Back to Velocity Girl: while their first albums were more similar to Ride and My Bloody Valentine than the aggro Riot Grrl sound that Hole popularized, their 1994 record !Simpatico! found the band showing off a more power-pop side than they previously had. And in no song was this change more evident than the leadoff track, "Sorry Again".
To dismiss this as simple power-pop is a bit deceiving; the dual guitar work of Archie Moore and Brian Nelson consists almost exclusively of single-note riffs that work in counter-point and not in the power chords or lush open string sounds that so often make up this genre. Because of this, many of the song's hooks lie in the guitar work and creates a much more interesting sound when juxtaposed with the bright melody in Sarah Shannon's double-tracked vocals.
On top of all of this, the band's frenetic energy gives the song an upbeat, positive feel, despite the regretful, lost love lyrics. However, there are some notes in the aforementioned guitar lines that give this song a shade of melancholy and more musical depth than you are like to find in any Letters to Cleo song, to which Velocity Girl will draw frequent comparisons.
Unfortunately, the band only released one more album after !Simpatico!, 1996's Gilded Stars and Zealous Hearts, but their influence was great, despite a small (but loyal) fan base; without them, one would like to think that bands like Letters to Cleo, Veruca Salt, Magnapop, that dog., and Belly would not have found success as easily.
Whatever.
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