STACK #224 June 2023

MUSIC FEATURE

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RVG, L - R: Isabele Wallace, Marc Nolte, Romy Vager, Reuben Bloxham

to-chaos single describes accidentally squashing that precise fish during a time warp, coming back to the present, and finding it's now a miserable squid version of the modern world. “Don't go back in time/ It's not worth it!” Romy appeals, with dramatic earnestness, in the chorus. Is it mental? Sure. Is it a great reminder that the absurd and surreal are a bit of a solace, because everything's made up and one thing is just as wack as another? “Yep,” Vager nods. “I think it's important to remember that; that's kind of how I live my life! Everything is just ridiculous in its own way. Not in a nihilist kind of way, but it gives you the freedom to believe in whatever you want to believe. You don't have to be stuck to things.” It's a maxim the four-piece have taken into creation of their third album, which follows Feral (2020) and A Quality of Mercy (2017), both critically lauded for their limber, bristling, return-to-Oz post-punk styles. Like those records, Brain Worms mixes the absurd with the very real, but also sifts Romy's own internal anxieties into freshly-shucked arrangements with new elactronics. “I think the thing about this album, it is about other people – about the whole culture going in this weird direction, people in power staring at Twitter all the time, social media, too much technology – but also, a lot of the songs are about me,” explains Vager. “Me having obsessions, my attachment to things. It’s kind of unhealthy,” she admits. Where those components begin and end is sometimes deliberately obscured; on the album's title track, Vager inhabits a character who has fallen into the conspiracy theory trap, with that self-aware irony she's so fantastic at embodying: “I used to be a journalist/ Now I'm screaming at my therapist,” she sings. But the vocalist attests that “we're all susceptible,” too. “I’ve always been worried that I would go down a rabbit hole,” she says. “I’ve always wanted to go see one of those big, evangelical Christian shows, like Benny Hinn when he comes to Australia, 'cause I just thought it would be very funny. But I never went, because I was always kind of terrified that I might get swept up in the performance..."

Brain Worms by RVG is out June 2 via Ivy League.

INTERVIEW

BRAINWAVES AND EARWORMS THE ABSURD GENIUS OF RVG Leapfrogging the perils of hype and slaloming past their influences, on their third album post-punk darlings RVG have managed to marry their wit and wisdom with new insight into how the best, worst, and weirdest of us get through the day. We spoke to frontwoman Romy Vager, all about the phenomenal Brain Worms. Words Zoë Radas

B efore Neanderthals, before mammals, before real amphibians even, there was that one fish that crawled out of the primordial swamp on its weird fin-stumps and became the common ancestor for basically all of life. It's called a Tiktaalik. Romy Vager knows this, because while on tour in the East Midlands of England, she visited the Natural History Museum of Nottingham. “I saw a little scale model of it,” she tells

us over Zoom from the Netherlands, where RVG are on tour, “and I was like, 'Oh. There it is.'”

Everything is just ridiculous, in its own way

The moment doesn't seem huge as Romy presents it in her deadpan style – which

isn't a constant, by the way, as she's just as likely to burst into laughter or deliver a suddenly insightful remark. But that little encounter at the museum informed one of the standouts on Brain Worms , the new album from Vager's band RVG. Entitled Squid , the synth-stroked, building

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Delta Goodrem had already left the 'burbs behind with white-hot number one singles Born to Try and Lost Without You , but it was Innocent Eyes that established Goodrem's fierce talents in the mysterious minor keys, and proved she wasn't just nine-grains wholesome. This month 20 years ago, the single Innocent Eyes followed its predecessors by hitting the ARIA chart's top – and the album from which it came went on to be the biggest-selling record in Australia for the entire decade. Go Delts!

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Delta Goodrem in the clip for Innocent Eyes

76 JUNE 2023

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