The last time Australian Guitar met with RVG frontwoman Romy Vager, she was feeling rather feral. “I just feel like a wild animal,” she told us at the time - January 2020, just a few weeks before the world as we knew it would cave in on itself in a chasm of plague-induced insanity. It was a fertile time for RVG the Melbourne indie-rockers on the precipice of their hard-earned mainstream breakthrough - with their aptly titled second album Feral making landfall that April. Punky and incitive at its core, Feral still had an impact - but the lack of touring opportunities meant Vager and co. couldn’t give it the life it deserved.
You’d think this would make the singer-songwriter even more pissed off; realistically, RVG’s third album should see them dive straight into the realm of blackened death metal, with lyrics so harrowing and violent they incite a visceral surge of anguish in the souls of any mortals brave enough to lend an ear.
It’s certainly got the title for an album like that: Brain Worms. But this isn’t RVG’s big “f*** you” record, nor is it another dose of the heart-wrenching melancholy, yearning and self-reflection that Vager cut her teeth on in RVG. It’s instead bright, playful and explorative, polychromatic by virtue of several new perspectives.
First, there’s the way RVG: where and its predecessor (2017’s ) were both tracked in very raw, protean DIY settings, LP3 was much more meticulous and considered - at least structurally (Vager kept the bulk of her lyrics unwritten 'til the last second, intentionally so to make songs feel more spontaneous) - with the band linking up with producer James Trevascus, who over three weeks, tracked with them in London.
