Welcome to our dystopian present. The wide streets of downtown are completely vacant, the people there are few, the restaurants have signs in the windows promising there is no cash to steal. It is March of 2020, so I turn on Porridge Radio. Frontperson Dana Margolin is always mercilessly interrogating her own thought patterns “It's been a long, long, long, long time/ I still don't know what's on my mind” (Don’t Ask Me Twice). In its thrashing, their album Every Bad is almost cleansing at times. There is perhaps no more relatable line uttered on this album than “I’m bored to death let’s argue” on ‘Born Confused’. ‘Born Confused’ is a bittersweet part incantation pulled taught and tense by violins. “What is going on with me?” asks Margolin, and that thought seems to plague us both throughout the album.
Porridge Radio is both self assured and perplexed; the band uses contradictions in a big way, Every Bad a fragmented internal dialogue that thrives on instability. They know emotions are not absolute and the tones and tempos of the album shift minute to minute. The thing is, the band really is charming. Every Bad wouldn’t feel like such a successful pummeling if they weren’t. There’s a sheer magnetism to Margolin’s sardonic delivery. It’s unmatched, moving from bitter to liberated in a matter of 90 seconds, often finding catharsis in her originally droning mantras. Porridge Radio doesn’t slide easily into one genre, playing with post punk and art rock elements. But why would they?
The band allows for emotional and sonic friction, shifting like tectonic plates with heavy guitars and dramatic crescendos. ‘Pop Song’ is a title turned on its head with Margolin exorcising her sharp self critiques “my bitterness subsides sometimes for a while/but I'm jealous to my core, so I'm never coming back”. “Please make me feel safe” she begs. And I think I understand that rocking, gentle moment so much it hurts. “You will like me when you meet me” (‘Sweet’) she recites as if stirring a potion, “you might even fall in love”. At one point the track collapses inwards, Margolin repeating “I bite my nails right down to the flesh” as if pulling the bloody slit of a cuticle off while she sings. She often sounds bored in the way that busy, interesting people often do when forced to explain themselves, “you’re wasting my time” (‘Long’). But the moments when Porridge Radio play with dissonance are some of their most interesting. They repeat what they wish to be true, or possibly more often, what is unfortunately true. “There’s nothing inside” Margolin repeats on ‘Homecoming Song’ before declaring “I’m coming home”. I can’t stand the sight of my apartment and it’s ugly yellow lighting and my catatonic partner and everyone who seems to have left me. “Thank you for leaving me, thank you for making me happy”. I take daily sanity walks to the art museum that I can’t even enter and sit on the grand steps with my big noise cancelling headphones on. I watch the park across the street from the steps and the people who also seem to find sanity in a short walk and sitting outside in the newly spring air. In the center of the album whirls ‘Lilac’, echoing out the phrase “I’m stuck” over and over again as the guitars pick up and Margolin’s voice strains, insisting “I’m kind!” It’s the fever break before the body just heats up again. “I don't want to get bitter, I want us to get better, I want us to be kinder to ourselves and to each other”. Porridge Radio speaks with a certain assured wisdom no matter how adrift they find themselves. I am trying not to take this all personally but I am in my twenties so my life does feel more ruined than everybody else’s. I promise I’m just trying to establish boundaries, I’m not trying to make things harder, “how do I say “no” without sounding like a little bitch?” cries Margolin, “I say what I need”. I like to think I get it when she says “and you want to be wanted” on ‘Give/Take’. I don’t know what is want and what is need at this point, I don’t know who or what I want anymore. And admittedly, I might be forgetting how to give.
The thing is, my personal life and crises don’t really matter in relation to Every Bad. Porridge Radio is uncompromising and whatever you manage to project onto their album feels somewhat like coincidence. But there’s a bravado I see myself in; in an interview with NME Margolin playfully responds “I’ve always known that we’re the best band in the world”. Her drone is always accompanied by a bit of a playful eye roll. Maybe it’s not that I’m projecting onto the album and more so that the questions we’re asking at this point in our lives are overlapping.
Over a year later I’m up too late in my kitchen making pasta and it occurs to me I missed a line. I remember the other lyric to ‘Born Confused’: “but I’m not”. Maybe in our interrogations and our repetition and our breakdowns we figure out exactly who we are.
