A music video for the song “The Rip” was recently released. It features Porridge Radio frontwoman Dana Margolin running on a treadmill set in a meadow. It is night, her breathing is visible. Under glaring spotlights and besieged by masked figures, Margolin powers himself out on the device. You see them scream, fall from a great height, finally collapse exhausted on the treadmill. It’s a beautiful symbol of how much effort the Londoner puts into her music.
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Not that their band members – keyboardist Georgie Stott, bassist Maddie Ryall and drummer Sam Yardley – were twiddling their thumbs on WATERSLIDE, DIVING BOARD, LADDER TO THE SKY. But Margolin, who expanded her solo project Porridge Radio, which she started in Brighton, into a quartet in 2015 and still writes all the songs to this day, is the beating heart of this constellation. She is the one who reveals her innermost being – sometimes packed in wonderful slogans – and therefore admits in interviews how embarrassing the song lyrics are sometimes for her. It is she who sings herself in rage.
Margolin easily oscillates between boiling and boiling over
This also applies to “Back To The Radio”, which opens the follow-up to the critics’ favourite, EVERY BAD (2020). To hissing guitar feedback and a children’s song-like keyboard melody, Margolin talks about vulnerability and being overwhelmed: “We sit here together / The same we have always been / Laughing and talking / But I want to cry to you.” Her voice is still controlled. But she’s already vibrating. And Porridge Radio rock up, do one round after another until Margolin almost roars.
In the following pieces, too, she oscillates slightly between boiling point and boiling over and her expressiveness is reminiscent of an Amanda Palmer, while she sings about jealousy, the fear of being alone and of death. Lines of text become mantras, for example in “Birthday Song”, in which Margolin apparently tries with all her might to harden herself when she chants in a continuous loop: “I don’t wanna be loved.” Sure, that’s more emo 2.0 than easy listening and can get down to the substance, even when listening. At the same time, there is something cathartic about it, creeping under your skin with its tangibility and urgency.
A pinch of 60s feeling and vintage horror film atmosphere
Thank god Margolin doesn’t crank it up all the time. And Porridge Radio’s indie rock develops new tones with every album, every production upgrade. Gone are the lo-fi days of recording in a shed with a laptop on the band’s 2016 debut RICE, PASTA AND OTHER FILLERS. Meanwhile, the Brits are piling up considerable shoegaze walls and making extensive use of the rental studio’s Wurlitzer and Hammond organs. Ergo: a pinch of 60s feeling and vintage horror film atmosphere.
“Trying” is arguably the band’s most catchy and upbeat number to date, while the piano ballad “Flowers” hints at an orchestral crescendo. The already mentioned “The Rip”, also a hit in the future, combines spacey retro synths with grunge guitars. When Dana Margolin sums up the emotional ups and downs in the title song “Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To The Sky” at the end, she does so subtly, with an acoustic guitar. It’s like a long exhale after a crying fit. Exhausted and relieved at the same time.
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