Porridge Radio - Clouds In The Sky They Will Always Be There For Me 

At certain points on Porridge Radio’s fourth studio album - swelling opener ‘Anybody’, say, or the hauntingly raw ‘Lavender Raspberries’ - there are dense, crescendoing arrangements that hit as cresting waves, threatening - but never quite managing - to drown frontwoman Dana Margolin completely. Written off the back of a period of intense touring and romantic tumult, ‘Clouds In The Sky They Will Always Be There For Me’ is in many ways a record of treading water; it’s a body of work that documents not the shipwreck nor the rescue, but rather the furious, beneath-the-surface efforts to keep oneself afloat. Inspired by professional burnout and personal heartbreak, it tackles the thorny question of how artists can invest so much of their identity in external channels - in their work, in their relationships - without losing grasp on themselves in the process.

It makes sense that all 11 tracks on ‘Clouds…’ began life as poems; where 2020 breakout record ‘Every Bad’ found Porridge Radio amid a sea of post-punk peers, here Dana’s lyricism and delivery land closer to the depth of feeling of Sharon Van Etten or Weyes Blood (‘Wednesday’; ‘In A Dream’), their evolution over the album’s course reflecting its slow but sure tilt towards thematic light. Initially, there’s a sort of ragged desperation to her vocal tone, particularly in ‘Anybody’’s urgent “I’m trying to reach you” refrain. The strings-led ‘God Of Everything Else’, meanwhile, sees her light a quiet fire of resilience, sipping on the volatile, vulnerable break-up cocktail of loss, self-loathing, jealousy and anger (“It’s not that I’m too much / You just don’t have the guts”).

The record’s electronic-tinged midpoint ‘You Will Come Home’, then, acts as the eye of the storm, a place of emotional purgatory in which Dana yearns for more certain days (“I would do anything to see what I’m waiting for”). And it’s this sense that mental and emotional progress can so often be so hard-won that makes the final flourish of triumphant closer ‘Sick Of The Blues’ all the more satisfying; here, Dana’s voice still has traces of that same ragged desperation, but this time, there’s an audible edge of defiance - of hope.