Velocity Girl - 1989-1992

Before Sub Pop, before the major-adjacent years, Velocity Girl were a Maryland band named after a Primal Scream song from the C86 tape, working out how much fuzz a pop song could absorb before it stopped being a pop song. 1989-1992 collects everything from that stretch: the singles, the flexis, the compilation tracks, and the early recordings that came before their debut album, including all six songs from the self-titled Slumberland EP.

The DC and Maryland scene that produced them was chasing Creation, Cherry Red, and 4AD as much as anything happening locally, and you can hear it. Vocals sit low in the mix, guitars run past the point of definition, and the melodies come through anyway. The lineup here includes Archie Moore of Black Tambourine, and Bridget Cross sings on "Clock" before leaving to focus on Unrest and handing the microphone to Sarah Shannon. "Forgotten Favorite" is the one that made their name and still stands as one of the great American noise-pop singles, the song that would turn up a few years later on the Clueless soundtrack. "Always," a cover of the Jam's "That's Entertainment," and the previously unreleased "I Know Exactly What You Mean" round out twelve tracks.

Taken together it fills a real gap in the record, the stretch where British jangle-pop got handed to American kids with louder amps and turned into something that would run through the next decade of indie rock. Most of this material has been scattered across long-gone seven inches and out-of-print CDs for thirty years.

Transparent orange vinyl on Slumberland, the label that put out most of it in the first place.