We lost a lot of bands in 2025, but none offered a means to grieve as cathartic as Porridge Radio. If one word could summarize the band’s music, “catharsis” would be the one – but “The Machine Starts to Sing”, an EP comprising songs recorded during the sessions for last year’s “Clouds in the Sky They Will Always Be There for Me“, is more subdued in its delivery.
When Dana Margolin started working on the fourth Porridge Radio album, there was something different in how the songwriter approached creativity.
“Almost all the songs started out as poems,” says Margolin of the work that became “Clouds In The Sky They Will Always Be There For Me” (2024), “I wanted to challenge myself.” In songwriting, Dana argues, she had learnt that the writer can always hide behind the tricks of the music and well-worn techniques such as repetition. “In a poem, though,” says Dana, “you can’t hide.”
Recorded in the Somerset countryside in early 2024 by long time Big Thief and Laura Marling engineer Dom Monks, The UK band’s new album is a coming-of-age moment inspired by burnout, the music industry, heartbreak and the brutal collapse of significant relationships and – crucially – Dana’s own increasing immersion in her craft as an artist.
Apart from the six-minute opening title track, the rest of the songs tend to downplay their climactic build ups by relying mostly on acoustic instrumentation. Even the closer ‘I’ve Got a Feeling (Stay Lucky)’, which swells with organic intensity, avoids blown-out distortion. “No need to talk about/ No need to cry about it/ Like dust, it all just blows away,” Dana Margolin sings on ‘Don’t Want to Dance’. Porridge Radio, of course, are the gale-force wind – and the best we can do is keep listening.
The Fat Angel Sings 