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

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

★★★★

Released October 18th, 2024 on Secretly Canadian Records

Some people write songs to communicate ideas, or just to hash out a fun pop melody. Porridge Radio frontwoman Dana Margolin is the other kind of songwriter, the kind that treats it like a type of therapy. Sure, you can say the same thing about Alanis Morissette or Taylor Swift, but there’s something a lot more intense about Margolin’s songs than the vaguely vicious reminiscing about cute boys that Swift trades in. The songs on Clouds In The Sky They Will Always Be There For Me are electric missives of love and desperation, the result of Margolin messily extracting herself from a short but incandescent relationship. They began as poems, which explains moments like the semi-rambling nature of “I’m A Dream I’m A Painting.” The rest of Porridge Radio brings them alive, though, turning heartbreak into killer indie rock that varies between tightly wound and loose.

In some places Margolin screams herself hoarse, in others she builds a whisper into an intensity that threatens to overwhelm the listener before being brought back down again. A lot of Clouds In The Sky They Will Always Be There For Me is like listening to someone relive their trauma from different angles before coming to a certain set of realizations that will make them happy again. That’s the note the album ends on. The closing track, “Sick Of The Blues”, is an ensemble number, bringing the rest of the band into a big singalong chorus. “I’m sick of the blues,” they chant, “I’m in love with my life again.” And thank god, really, as I’m not sure we could have survived the tsunami of emotion that would have resulted had that not been the case.