RVG

RVG's eagerly awaited third album is called Brain Worms, because every day you witness a world of private obsessions being taken out to infinity. It's not entirely new territory for the Melbourne post-punk band and its lyricist/frontwoman Romy Vager, but this time a newfound radical acceptance shimmers over everything.

Throughout the album Brain Worms, it's obvious that this band is in fine form. Album opener 'Common Ground' sets the tone for what is to come; a shiny, exciting, hard-hitting album with all the beloved RVG hallmarks. Vager's voice is as unfiltered and commanding as ever when delivering her clever, not entirely ironic lyrics. Here, however, those lyrics feel much less resigned and wistful, and much more defiant and joyful.

"Tambourine" is the only Covid song Vager wrote when she was "trying not to write Covid songs," and it's a painfully honest portrait of grief in the midst of isolation. Brain Worms tells the all-too-familiar story of someone who falls down the rabbit hole of the Internet and finds solace in conspiracies. 'Nothing Really Changes' is a keyboard-heavy new wave thing, while the closing 'Tropic of Cancer' shines with Vager's confident new manifesto: "I know how I am, and I know how I'm going to be. If you think I'm weird, you ain't seen nothing yet.

Bloxham, Nolte and Wallace bring Vager's songwriting to life with bravura. Recorded in London at Snap Studios with James Trevascus (Billy Nomates, Nick Cave & Warren Ellis, The Goon Sax), all ten tracks brim with lush sounds and clear intentions - and the magic of an acoustic guitar once owned by Kate Bush and given to her by Tears for Fears (who, legend has it, wrote "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" on it).

After the first five years, during which the debut album A Quality of Mercy received critical acclaim, landed on countless best-of lists and played alongside Pixies, Kurt Vile, Pete Doherty, Sleaford Mods, Camp Cope, Shame and many others, RVG released their second album Feral just as the world stood still. Feral was called "masterfully realized" by The Big Issue, "the record of a lifetime" by Rolling Stone Australia and awarded four-and-a-half stars by the Sydney Morning Herald.

But the four band members - lead singer and guitarist Vager, guitarist Reuben Bloxham, drummer Marc Nolte and bassist Isabele Wallace - feel more confident on this album than they ever have on RVG. They've left their influences behind, pushed themselves and tried new things. And they've made an album that, by all accounts, they can call their best.

"Hype is scary. After two years of Covid, it felt like the hype had died down, so we could just do what we wanted," Vager says. "This time we said to ourselves, this is what we're going to do, we're going to take control, we're going to take risks, and we're going to make an album that sounds so big that when we hear it on the radio, we want to hear it again."

"If we could only make one more album, it would be this one," Vager says.