Melbourne’s RVG return with their highly-anticipated second album, Feral. Following their beloved 2017 debut A Quality of Mercy, RVG perform the tricky alchemy of combining rock’s urgency, punk’s anarchy, and pop’s empathy to create a record that feels vital: Feral is a catharsis, a call to arms, and a forthright indictment of contemporary complacency.
Recorded at Head Gap studios with producer Victor Van Vugt (PJ Harvey, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Beth Orton). Internationally renowned, Van Vugt currently resides in Berlin and travelled to Melbourne to work with RVG. One of the producer’s key tenets is a sense of spontaneity, of capturing the essence of a song’s live performance, a concern that RVG prize above all else when recording.
Feral’s lead single 'Alexandra', released in May 2019, was described by The Fader as: "Maintain[ing] the band’s raw energy while adding newfound depth and sheen...Vager’s evocative howl underscored by instrumentation that’s powerful without overpowering.”
A song that describes the pain of the ever-entwined personal and political, 'Alexandra' is at home on Feral: Vager’s lyrics are concerned, as ever, with the state of the world around her. That said, these are not laments or elegies. Instead, the songs on Feral often feel like exorcisms.
Feral is RVG’s first full-length release in three years, and marks the beginning of an exhilarating new era for the band. Both a cry for help and a call to action, this is an album that demands your attention.
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Cover image by Anna Cunningham, in article image by Naomi Lee Beveridge.
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