RVG

RVG are the real thing. Put it under a microscope and study it. I dare you to try and replicate it. Dripping with the kind of punk-poet pedigree that any would-be “Saviours of Rock” would steal for, they own a place in the line of quality-sealed local greats from the Bad Seeds to The Church.

Formed and based in Naarm, with a sound that recalls the past but lives in the future, RVG melds post-punk with dense lyricism and social commentary. After their critically acclaimed first record “A Quality of Mercy” and second “Feral”, they round a trilogy with “Brain Worms”. It’s already pulling awards into its gravitational orbit, including this year's illustrious Australian Music Prize (AMP for those in a hurry).

Brain Worms, the title track from the eponymous album, has a raucous energy. Stinging guitars accompany a full-throated vocal with an almost gleeful horror to it. “I used to be a journalist / but now I’m yelling at my therapist,” and “The brain worms got into my head, and I can’t get them out”. It’s an earworm that you won’t ever get out.

Filmed in an almost certainly haunted manor house, the band fill every corner of the room with drenched sound. Lyricist/frontwoman Romy Vager spits and purrs, guitarist Reuben Bloxham, drummer Marc Nolte and bassist Isabele Wallace punch out jangly fuzz-laden hooks with effortless efficiency. It’s pure exhilaration.

Romy is an accomplished writer with literary flare and acidic wit. On “Tambourine”, she laments the coldness of a COVID Zoom funeral, with its connection problems and bad playlist (name-checking “Drops of Jupiter”). There’s a search for human dignity and anger at hypocrisy.

Great art is hard to distinguish from reality. We put a frame around it so we can explain it. But sometimes it’s so good to see it in its natural habitat.

Pass me a peeler as we continue to peel our eyes for any future RVG greatness.

CREDITS

Producer, Photos, Camera Op, Edit JAMES MORRIS, Director, Camera Op, Lights, Edit, Grade, Words PETER HUME, Co-Producer, Online Editor LARISSA JANE HUME, Audio & Mix ISAAC BARTER, Production Assistant ANGIE KILSBY Runner OLIVER JANSSON. Special thanks to Caulfield Mansion and the team at OUR GOLDEN FRIEND and IVY LEAGUE.