RVG

Australian rock outfit RVG—short for the Romy Vager Group—emerged from Melbourne’s outer suburbs during the second half of the 2010s, merging richly chiming guitar melodies with taut post-punk edges, gothic undertones, and echoes of 1980s college rock. Critical praise greeted their energetic first full-length, A Quality of Mercy, in 2017, after which the group moved to Fire Records for the 2020 follow-up Feral. Following a pandemic-related hiatus, RVG resurfaced in 2023 with the restless, atmospheric Brain Worms.

The project began in 2015 in Melbourne’s Preston district when Adelaide-born singer-songwriter Romy Vager assembled the lineup, drawing on precedents set by the Go-Betweens, the Soft Boys, and the Psychedelic Furs. Earlier groups led by Vager had leaned toward heavier, more purgative sounds; with RVG the aim shifted to a midpoint where melodic sophistication intersects with punk and garage immediacy. The eight-track debut A Quality of Mercy was captured live by the band inside Melbourne’s Tote rock venue, without any audience present. Early the following year RVG returned on Fire with Feral, produced by Victor Van Vugt, whose prior credits include PJ Harvey and Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. Brain Worms, the third album, was tracked alongside James Trevascus at Snap Studios in London; several songs employed an acoustic guitar formerly owned by Kate Bush, whose sonic character complemented the record’s mixture of anxious post-punk and polished synth-pop textures.