Alexander Grigg, Red Riders

Sydney’s Red Riders are a cheerful bunch of indie rock miserabilists with a fine line in martial and anthemic live shows.

Do you come from a musical family?

ALEXANDER GRIGG: Not really, man. Like, we had a piano in my house and my mum and dad sang on it, but it was more my cousins I think. They were really into the Jesus And Mary Chain and Smashing Pumpkins and My Bloody Valentine and The Cure and all these bands and it was really through them that I got exposed to a lotta, like, really good music. And my sister was really into You Am I and Hi Fi Way and all that stuff. So yeah, it wasn’t really a musical family, but I think that – without sounding like a pretentious douchebag – I’ve kinda always been musical. It’s only something I’ve really only noticed lately when I think back. I’ve always been making up little songs since I was young. Not amazing, anything amazing, but it just comes pretty naturally to me – music and being musical. So I guess I’ve always been musical, but not really from a musical family, yeah.

So do you have notebooks full of things you wrote when you were a teenager?

AG: Yeah, embarrassing notebooks I try not to look at ever. Because they’re just full of intense – when I look back at me as a teenager I’m like, ‘Oh my God, you were so intense and annoying! So angsty and bad.’ I try not to look at that stuff too much. I have more cassettes actually because I recorded everything with this dictaphone, I’d record all my ideas. I must have at least 50, more than 50 cassettes lying around my house of different stuff, different ideas screamed down into a dictaphone.