RVG - Feral

RVG waren bei PVG schon mit ihrem Debütalbum „A Quality Of Mercy“ recht erfolgreich und belegten am Ende des Jahres Platz 18.

Drei Jahre später lässt die australische Band rund um Romy Vager das von Victor Van Vugt (PJ Harvey, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Beth Orton) produzierte und in Melbourne nahezu live eingespielte zweite Album folgen. Der Lo-Fi-Charme des Debüts, dessen Produktion gerüchteweise nur 180 Dollar kostete, bleibt also trotz eines extra aus Berlin eingeflogenen Produzenten vorhanden und auch die musikalischen Koordinaten (Jangle-Pop mit einem Hauch von New Wave und Post-Punk) in Tradition der Go-Betweens (und weiterer 80er Jahre Bands wie Echo And The Bunyymen, The Smiths, The Gun Club, The Cure usw.) bleiben bestehen. 

Bleiben noch die Fragen, wer auf die Idee kam, dem Song „Christian Neurosurgeon“ den schrillen Sound eines Bohrers, der an Lobotomie denken lässt, zu verpassen und ob „Feral“ den Erfolg von „A Quality Of Mercy“ wird toppen können. Aus einem an guten Alben mangelnden April ragt das zweite Album von RVG jedenfalls heraus.

Often, the true quality of an album can easily be seen in the initial reaction it evokes from its listener. While the opening of RVG’s Feral is enough to warrant a gasped exclamation of enthusiastic blasphemy, it is its completion that leaves you speechless, unable to do anything except listen to it again, hoping to recapture the magic of that first listen.
(Rolling Stone)

Snapshots of confrontation, confusion and heartache sit alongside overwhelming moments of pure love. This is the sound of a band coming of age, and ‘Feral’ depicts RVG as the heartbreaking, soul-embracing force for good that they’ve threatened to be from the very start.
(NME)

On Feral, RVG have created a record that is political in the personal. The lyrics are full of metaphors focusing on the exploration of the individual within the collective, the search for self-freedom, and the release of finding it and rising up against those that try to push us into their neat boxes. It’s a record that is totally of its time and yet could have been written at any point in the last three decades. An oxymoron, a contradiction, dragged into a world of confusion though the road is clear ahead.
(Louder Than War)

Feral could accurately be described as post-punk, but that feels too limiting of a description. RVG, while maintaining a notion of cohesiveness, carefully explore various tones and textures to convey a wide range of human emotions. Throughout the record, Vager is internalising global unrest and filtering it through her own personal struggle in a way that most listeners will be able to connect with. Feral is a strong rock album that is worth a listen at a time when it’s become increasingly more difficult to filter through the swarm of hackneyed indie rock albums to choose from.
(sun genre)