Porridge Radio at Mississippi Studios

Name: Porridge Radio at Mississippi Studios
Start: 2025-02-04T21:00:00-07:00
Location: Mississippi Studios

Schedule

Tue Feb 04 2025 at 09:00 pm

UTC-07:00

Location

Mississippi Studios | Portland, OR

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This Event is 21+
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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 longtime Big Thief and Laura Marling engineer Dom Monks, Clouds In The Sky They Will Always Be There For Me is Porridge Radio’s new album and first new music in two years. 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.

Across the album, particularly on the devastating A Hole In the Ground and God Of Everything Else, Dana’s ruthlessly self-interrogating writing style is matched by some of the band’s most affecting music to date, patiently building and tragically intense.

When Porridge Radio formed in 2014 - a decade ago - being in a band was the very last thing that London-born Dana Margolin expected to do. Studying anthropology at the University of Sussex, Dana began performing her songs on her own at local open mic nights, before assembling a full band - taking in Georgie Stott on keyboards and backing vocals, Sam Yardley on drums and keyboards, and former bassist Maddie Ryall (who departed in 2023, replaced by Dan Hutchins). Their debut album - Rice, Pasta and Other Fillers (2016) was followed by Every Bad (2020), which was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize and acclaimed by The Guardian as “uncompromisingly brilliant.” Later, Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder to the Sky (2022) became their first UK Top 40 Album Chart success.

After 2022 - by some distance the band’s busiest year of live shows to date - had finally calmed, the suddenly quiet beginning of 2023 was a decisive moment for Dana. “I got home having been so sad and so tired for so long, and running from that sadness using work and exhaustion to the point of distraction, and then suddenly I wasn’t on tour all the time,” she remembers, “I was just sitting in my room.” This became a period of reflection for the songwriter who had not stopped for the best part of a decade, and had knotty questions about identity, creativity and family to unpack. “I come from a family of workaholics,” smiles Dana, “it’s that, and it’s art, it’s not just work. It’s my whole life.” Dana wanted to work out a way forward - how do you retain creativity, without harming yourself in the process?