Radio Free Alice are ready to take on the world

I t’s a rain-spattered Saturday at Reading Festival 2026 , and Radio Free Alice are playing to a jam-packed tent at the Ballroom Stage.

Beneath somewhat incongruous chandeliers – Reading not a fest readily associated with glamour – sweat-streaked kids lose themselves to the piledriving rhythm of ‘Johnny’ and pound the ground to the frenetic ‘(I Gotta) Fall In Love’.

It’s a standout set from the festival’s best edition in years.

Backstage later, the Aussie four-piece debrief on the chaos with NME .

“We were really happy,” beams frontman Noah Learmonth.

“There was a full tent, so that was crazy.” Just two years earlier, the picture was very different.

“The first show we played in London was to zero people,” Learmonth remembers when NME next catches up with the band over video call.

The venue in question for that early gig was the back room at east London clothing shop Paper Dress Vintage.

It holds fewer than 200 people, but capacity was no issue that night.

“[It was just] our manager and Jules’ cousin.” Radio Free Alice on The Cover of NME.

Credit: Tom Oxley for NME When Radio Free Alice released tickets for their next London show the following summer, however, “it sold out immediately”.

The same thing happened time and time again after that – much to the band’s astonishment.

It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to work out what had happened, though.

One spin of ‘Polyester’, the gang’s second EP, released shortly after the clothing shop gig, tells you everything you need to know about their appeal.