Interview: Radio Free Alice at Tramlines ’26

Despite hailing from nearly ten thousand miles away in Australia, Radio Free Alice already feel so ingrained in the UK music scene. With their pounding basslines and dirtied guitar riffs, their sound wouldn’t feel out of place in a sticky-floored pub in any Northern town. This new take on a nostalgic sonic recipe has taken them far and wide across the UK through tours, support slots and festivals, with the most recent of the latter being Sheffield’s own Tramlines 2026. The Gryphon’s music editorial team had the pleasure of talking to the Melbourne four-piece following their set on the Leadmill stage on the opening day of the festival.

We caught up with the early 20’s four-piece just an hour after they got off stage in the Steel city, and so to not ask them about their post-gig rituals would be a journalistic travesty: “Silence. There’s so much adrenaline when you play and then you come off and do nothing for an hour, so we are very chill. That’s our ritual.”

The tent was rife with energy for their afternoon set, an energy which was maintained by the immediate and feverish nature of the RFA catalogue. Each song is a high tempo firecracker, here for a good time not a long one, a style which naturally lends itself to both the high-speed nature of the modern day music industry and the brimming passion of festival sets: “I think the way we like to write songs is that we like immediacy and we like to trim the fat, we’re very conscious of when sections feel self indulgent and ask if sections are enjoyable enough to warrant staying in there, if not they get cut.” The results of this merciless, musical butchering are songs that pierce through the skull, ear to ear, like a bullet, they’re restless in their delivery and poignant in their desire to stand out.

This isn’t to say that Radio Free Alice are all speed and no substance however. Other tracks in their catalogue, such as ‘Spain’ and ‘Empty Words’,  see them taking a more laid back approach, introducing saxophone and a (somewhat) slower tempo to let their artistic flair shine. “‘Spain’ and ‘Empty Words’ are the only two songs where the sax has a through line throughout the song, there’s a couple songs where there are little bits of sax in the back but not enough to introduce it [when playing] live”.

This catalogue has been building steadily over the course of the band’s career, culminating now in an (albeit yet to be confirmed) debut album. Their excitement for the upcoming release is palpable, with them sharing the news with us despite their management’s best hopes to avoid the news spilling before a formal announcement is made: ”We were told not to talk about it, and yet here we are like ‘yeah we have an album!’”. Whilst mostly tight-lipped on the content of the project, the band were confident in the finished product thanks to the time they’ve devoted to it: “It’s bunch of music that we are proud of that has taken 3 years to come together as opposed to like a dedicated 3 months, we’ve been writing this album for a long time and it’s good, we hope people agree!”

The latest offering of the new era of Radio Free Alice comes in the form of the new single ‘Kick in the Shins’, released just days prior to our chance to chat with the lads. The three minute track offers that regular Radio Free Alice charm, backed by an acoustic guitar strum and a pounding tambourine throughline. Whilst the song feels tight and whole in its delivery, its origins were much more fractured: “It was the verse and the chorus of other songs and we sort of ‘frankensteined’ them together, it is one of our rockier, high energy, rougher songs we’ve done.”

Whilst the release depicts a confident stride into the new era for the group, finding their ideal process for writing material amidst touring wasn’t an overnight success: “It is difficult when you are constantly touring as it definitely disrupts your usual pattern of writing as you don’t have time to write bad stuff and then filter it out to get the good stuff, it’s all about finding those important periods, but it seems to be going alright as we have some experience with it now.”

Radio Free Alice continue their summer with appearances at various festivals, including Boardmasters and Reading Festival, as well as several across Europe. Fans can also expect the release of more new music and the announcement of a full length project in the near future.

Words by Daniel Brown