A Porridge Radio song is catharsis in action. Lead singer Dana Margolin always sounds like she's on the precipice of passing out, which, it turns out, did actually happen a few times during the recording of the band's fourth album Clouds In the Sky They Will Always Be There for Me. The emotion is palpable; the release is paramount.Clouds is the result of a decade making music and touring; years of flights, hotels, set-ups, tear-downs, and somehow finding the time to create more. In 2023, Margolin was burned out, back home, and broken up with. From this solitary hole of exhaustion and heartbreak, she slowly hauled herself up and processed her creative next steps. This included a turn to poetry. As it turns out, the majority of songs on Clouds started out as poems, which adds a distinctly lyrical element to the songs. Paired with Margolin's blistering, raw vocals, it delivers an emotional roller coaster. The album feels heavier than previous efforts, as the group works through the weight of losing love, connection and sense of self. Porridge Radio — Georgie Stott on keyboards and backing vocals, Sam Yardley on drums and keyboards and Dan Hutchins on bass — have been simmering on the back-burner of indie music for a while now. Every Bad (2020) was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize and Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder to the Sky (2022) was the band's first UK Top 40 Album Chart success. Clouds builds on this run and brings a rejuvenated and recalibrated Porridge Radio to the fore. The band brought in engineer Dom Monks, who's worked with Big Thief and Laura Marling, to bring this chapter to life.The one-two punch of "God of Everything Else" followed by "Sleeptalker" is at the crux of what makes Porridge Radio so effective at what they do. If anyone knows the hypnotic power of repetition, it's Margolin. Everything is said with her chest, screaming ardently into the abyss; the lyrics pounded into your head until you're KO'ed by their sheer velocity and bruising nature. It's breathless clarity and muddled ambiguity bottled into a few short minutes. "I would do anything to see what I'm waiting for" she warbles over and over again on "You Will Come Home," conveying her deep sense of longing. At times Clouds risks being dragged down by its bleak outlook, but ultimately it's a moving portrait of a band on the brink of its own breakthrough. "It's taught me so much," says Margolin in the album's presser on creating Clouds. "Following your gut to the nth point, trusting your friends and their loyalty, trusting yourself to be able to fight with people properly and still come back together. How I want to live is how I want to make records, because making records is my life because my work is my play is my job is my life. It all ties together in this thing, and there are ways to do this that might not kill me."Clouds is the product of being forced to step back and take stock of the bigger picture. Life is a pendulum that swings between extremes in search of balance. Porridge Radio claw their way to a newfound equilibrium by facing these emotional highs and lows, coming out the other side all the better for it. On the final track, Margolin sings "I'm sick of the blues, I'm in love with my life again." Love blooms, again.
Wavelength
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