Hearing RVG's 2017 debut album A Quality Of Mercy and seeing their extraordinary live shows around that time was a real thrill.
The band had an urgent and propulsive set of excellent post-punk songs and, in frontwoman Romy Vager, a smart and vulnerable leader.
Second album Feral, which kept so many of us company in the early months of lockdown, proved that RVG were only getting better. Vager's stories were even richer this time around, her character portraits even more engrossing.
You probably see it coming, but it needs to be said: RVG hit even greater highs on their third album Brain Worms.
The band are dependable as always, following the various emotional tracks and shades of indie rock that crop up across the LP with an ease that feels natural.
'Common Ground' is a slow and stable start, and its relative gentleness boosts the intensity of the powerful 'Midnight Sun'. 'Squid''s dark synth pulse provides a suitably ominous base for Vager's pleading vocal, while 'Nothing Really Changes' just takes what we've always loved about RVG and refines it further.
Title track is sharp and to-the point - a frenetic slice of jangly goodness - while 'You're The Reason' is a depression anthem whose glum musical mood is a perfect bedfellow for the heavily bummed out lyric.
Brain Worms' pièce de résistance is the slow creep of 'Nothing Really Changes'. In fact, it might be the finest moment the band have committed to record so far.
The song's simple melody and straightforward lyric belies its power, the way it builds in intensity, culminating in the final frustrated insistence of 'I don't wanna fight, you're not gonna ruin my night tonight', make it the rarest of songs: an emotionally affecting piece of music that's also simply a total bop.
This time around, Vager's melodies are perhaps just a little sharper: on tracks like 'Giant Snake' and 'It's Not Easy', they stick on the first try.
This time around, her lyrics are even more vivid, and even more affecting. Just try and not be fully engrossed after the first couple of lines of the devastating 'Tambourine':
'They're playing 'Drops Of Jupiter', because they never even knew yaThe room is so cold and dark, your family are wearing masksI can't hear the eulogy, the stream is bad qualityAnd I don't wanna see you go through a tab on Google Chrome'
If you lost someone through the pandemic - and who didn't? - it's tough listening. But it's only tough because she gets it so right. And she only gets it so right because she's so honest.
This has been the defining hallmark of Vager's writing since the start: she is unflinchingly willing to be emotionally exposed, happy to work through her challenges in full view, hopeful her fans can either relate to or learn from her experiences.
If you were following RVG closely in 2020, you were probably devastated on their behalf that so many great opportunities for the band fell away as the world shut down. But, in a statement released with the record, Vager says there were certain benefits to this forced reset.
"Hype is scary," she said. "After two years of COVID it felt like the hype had gone down, so we were able to just do stuff.
"This time around we were like, this is what we're doing, we're taking control, we're taking risks, and we're going to make an album that sounds big so 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."
Hopefully there are plenty more RVG albums to come, because Brain Worms has proven that this band has so much to give.
Romy Vager from RVG joins Karen Leng on Double J Mornings this Thursday. Listen here.