Australian band RVG – aka the Romy Vager Group – blend emotional songs to a sound that harks back to the early eighties of British postpunk. And are all the better for that.

I was lucky enough to see this Melbourne band play one of their first UK gigs at the Shacklewell Arms in Dalston about five years ago – and I’ve been a fan ever since.

Their sound channels a mixture of Australian bands like The Go-Betweens and those UK early-eighties postpunk groups like the Bunnymen, Teardrops, Psychedelic Furs and Lloyd Cole & The Commotions.

RVG formed in 2015 in the suburb of Preston (mocked in song by Courtney Barnett as Depreston) and self-recorded their first album live in a club there two years later.

They’ve just released their third album but this track, from their second one Feral, remains my favourite, with its killer opening line. Why use a load of flowery words to break the news when you can say it all like this: “I used to love you. But now I don’t.”

Romy Vager, the singer and guitarist (hence RVG – Romy Vager Group), is a great guitarist, with a tone that recalls the Bunnymen’s Will Sergeant, and throws everything into her impassioned singing.

She’s got a way of showing the emotion in her face when she sings her melancholy songs of heartbreak… like this one. And a way with words that treads a fine line between heartfelt emotion and eye-rolling sarcasm that, at times, makes me laugh out loud.

I saw them most recently supporting Billy Nomates at The Forum in Kentish Town, and although they are back in Australia now, you can catch them if you’re in Newcastle or Edinburgh at the end of July.