RVG | GUT HEALTH // live at sideway

Huge double headline show at sideway with RVG and Gut Health. First time in the capital for RVG and Gut Health are back to bring you more raw energy. Tickets are $20 + booking fee or $25 at the door. Doors at 6:00pm.

//

Sonically daring. Visually adventurous. Hypnotic art-punk with a bizarre post-punk edge. Six-piece ensemble Gut Health has emerged from the Naarm/Melbourne underground as one Australia’s most compelling new acts.

Backed by the leadership of their LGBTI-heavy band and peers, Gut Health harness an uncompromising ethos that both showcases and fosters open liberation and the healing qualities of consensual rage in its many and varied forms.

The band bottle these values along with the spirit of New York’s No-Wave revolution and the diverse musical backgrounds of each player – spanning punk to jazz and beyond – to create a polymorphous and positively thrilling, dance-floor filling, post-punk concoction.

Their 2022 debut EP Electric Party Chrome Girl - self-recorded in a storage facility in the heart of Brunswick and released via indie-freaks Marthouse Records - was an instant hit amongst music lovers and tastemakers alike, puncturing Australia’s perception of punk and projecting the band from the concealed corners of Melbourne’s underground warehouse spaces into the spotlight.

Enthusiastic reviews from the likes of Rolling Stone, triple j and Post Trash swiftly followed, while the band’s music and videos were added to radio and television playlists nationwide.

With a heavy emphasis on their driving rhythm section backed by sharp, angular guitars and mind-mangling synthesisers, Gut Health’s songs are brought home by the effervescent melodies and lyrical wit of front person Athina Uh Oh.

Bold musical icebreaker and debut single ‘Inner Norm’ is a tongue-in-cheek depiction of the conformity of alternative in Melbourne’s inner North, while newest single ‘The Recipe’ is a celebratory siren call to society’s high femmes - the drag queens, artists, sex workers, and others who throw sparkles to freely express themselves and/or make a living.

Brazen in their message of self-expression and staunchly encouraging the visceral powers of the dance floor, Gut Health summon a cross pollination of communities to dance together – uninhibited, liberally and safely.

Gut Health are Athina Uh Oh, Adam Markmann, Dom Willmott, Eloise Murphy-Hill, Angus Fletcher and Myka Wallace.

//

In April 2020 RVG shared their highly-anticipated sophomore album Feral unto the world. 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. 

Recorded at Head Gap studios with producer Victor Van Vugt (PJ Harvey, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Beth Orton), ‘Feral' is RVG’s first full-length release in three years and marks the beginning of a new era for the band. 

To Romy Vager, RVG’s lead singer and lyricist, to feel feral is to feel outside of everything. Throughout this album that feeling of isolation is incited, but it never feels hopeless: these songs channel the raw energy of despair and frustration into melodies that often feel victorious, perhaps only because they so aptly supply a soundtrack to the end of days. 

Since releasing their first album to critical acclaim and audience adoration, RVG have made huge strides at home and internationally: the band played an iconic set at Meredith Music Festival, travelled Europe and the UK with Shame (UK) and Sleaford Mods (UK), toured the USA with Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, toured Australia with Kurt Vile (US), Pixies (UK) and POND, showcased at SXSW, The Great Escape and Reeperbahn, performed at Denmark’s renowned Roskilde Festival, and played a BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge session, hosted by Huw Stephens. They also have an arena tour with Faith No More coming up in 2021.