Sunday, February 19, 2023

CD Odyssey Disc 1621: Porridge Radio

As long time readers will know, I don’t listen to the radio. I find new music through reviews, my own research and the recommendations of friends. Regardless of the method, I listen to the album once before deciding if I’m going to buy it…usually. Sometimes I’ll take a flier on something new from an established artist that’s never let me down, but it only takes a couple of duds to make me default even old favourites back to the “listen first” camp (I’m looking at you, Steve Earle).

I almost never buy something based on someone else telling me to trust it, but yesterday I did exactly this…twice! In addition to two artists I was looking for (Caitlin Rose and Main Source) I also bought two albums blind, based on recommendation by a friend: Amyl and the Sniffers and Orange Goblin. Both are amazing, so thanks to Nick and Chris respectively for the good advice.

Disc 1621 is…Every Bad

Artist: Porridge Radio

Year of Release: 2020

What’s up with the Cover?  This cover plays hell with my blue/red colour blindness. It’s not totally invisible, but it is about as clear as mud. Are there tendrils reaching up to a moon? I think so… Do I care? I think not…

How I Came To Know It: I got into this band through their 2022 album, “Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder to the Sky.“Every Bad” was me drilling through their back catalogue.

How It Stacks Up: I have two Porridge Radio albums, and this one is the second best. Or last, depending on how pessimistic you’re feeling.

Rating: 3 stars but almost 4

Listening to Porridge Radio, I found myself wondering if growing up in Brighton, England, they spent a lot of rainy Spring afternoons listening to their parents Cure albums, staring at the sea and sighing a lot.

There is no shade intended here, however. The Cure are an amazing band, and while a lot of the production, arrangements and song structures are reminiscent of the Cure, lead singer and band leader Dana Margolin uses that inspiration to craft powerful music which is evocative, not derivative.

It starts with Margolin’s vocals which share a lot of their plaintive cry quality with Robert Smith. Slightly flat, urgent and desperate, and sad but in a triumphant kind of “losers unite!” kind of way. If Robert Smith annoys you, rest assured that Margolin will also annoy you. However, if you enjoy this kind of vocal delivery, Margolin will draw you into a delightful intersection of melancholy and dread import.

While there are tracks that I like better than others, “Every Bad” works best as a cohesive album. It is a mood piece, and it will make you want to wear black and take long walks at midnight. Most of the time I fell fully under its spell, the resonant and echoing production enveloping my mood. Once in a while the songs dragged, slowly unraveling at their ends and lingering past their welcome.

This could relate to individual songs, but more often than not it was how whether I was letting the music into my heart. This music is better when you are feeling introspective and emotionally open, less compelling when stuck in traffic.

Lyrically the songs are what you might expect from the music’s style, with a lot of introverted exploration of uncertainty and doubt. It might look something like this line off of “Give/Take”:

“How do I say no without sounding like a little bitch
And how do I say no without being contagious?”

Or from “Born Confused” this bit of sadness as celebration:

“Thank you for leaving me
Thank you for making me happy”

Born Confused” is a good song, but that refrain above gets repeated a lot at the end of it, and a good example of Porridge Radio’s propensity for doubling or tripling down on mood, sometimes at the expense of knowing when to wrap something up.

Overall, “Every Bad” is intricate, thoughtful and emotionally honest and has one of the key indicators of a good record – it improves on each listen. I look forward to exploring its depths further in coming years.

Best tracks: Sweet, Don’t Ask Me Twice, Give/Take, Lilac

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