Porridge Radio’s 'Every Bad' is a Timely Declaration of Anger and Confusion
by Annie Wojnarowski
When you start to repeat things in your head, they start to become true. The merciless circling of incantations can drive you so crazy that they start to become your reality. Porridge Radio’s lead singer and songwriter Dana Margolin knows this far too well. Their sophomore album, Every Bad, is an invitation to the mind of someone trying to figure out who they are under the absurdist circumstance of living in 2020. In a world that is literally on fire, this Brighton-based band finds a way to articulate their confusion, anger, and absolvement in what is easily the best album of the year so far.
Every Bad comes four years after Porridge Radio’s DIY heavy debut, Rice, Pasta and other Fillers. As the band moves to their sophomore record, Every Bad takes that manic DIY energy and works it into a cohesive masterpiece that aims to purge the anxiety and tension.
With “Born Confused”, Margolin asks herself “What is going on with me?” a question that she seeks to answer with every line for the rest of the album. In the first track, she starts to lament, saying that she may have lost her chance to ever know the truth: “And maybe I was born confused but I'm not / And maybe I was born and I knew and I forgot.” As the song goes, she repeats the same line over and over again: “Thank you for making me happy” first sounding genuine, then quickly devolving to an exasperated plea to convince herself that she is happy at all.
This frustration follows into “Sweet”, a song that reads like a diary entry you probably shouldn’t be looking at. Heavily influenced by Lorde’s 2016 album Melodrama, it plays with both lightheartedness and deep frustration and paranoia. An opening xylophone ding, reminiscent of a kindergarten music class, is harshly interrupted by a raucous guitar that reverberates alongside Margolin’s quiet incantation of “She will love me when she meets me / I am charming, I am sweet.” It seems like less of a statement than a wish, one that sounds like if you keep repeating it, it may come true. These kinds of wishes and hopes are ones that seem also like worries. Although this pattern of chants seems to grasp at a want, it also begs the question: If I do get this, will it be enough?
In the midst of this search for stability or at least a semblance of sanity, “Long” brings up the anxiety of realizing that something they’ve concentrated on really gave them nothing in the end. “You're wasting my time” is echoed from the beginning then slowly, Margolin turns to the finger to herself: “I'm wasting your time / I'm wasting everything.”
As everything seems to be falling apart, there is a moment of surrender in “Pop Song”. A song that relies on stripped-down guitar and a gentle drum, Margolin finally confronts her loneliness and fear of never finding somewhere to secure. After airing her grievances, she collapses, repeating: “And please make me feel safe.” That line sucks the air out of the room, it’s so jarring, that level of vulnerability in a track that seeks to gain retribution for losing the most sacred thing any human can have: security.
This pattern of vulnerability grows sentimental on its B-side. “Lilac”, a song that works with gorgeous violin strings amidst a controlled tone from Margolin, the track seeks to find inner-stability in a world that constantly feels like its pulling the rug from under you. This want for inner zen builds and builds as “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” is echoed, with bigger and bigger sound until Margolin is screaming it through the speakers. She wants this so bad, she’s begging for something to give until the song peaks off its axis and abruptly ends.
It seems as though the answer to Margolin’s question of “What’s going on with me?” finds its heartbreaking answer in the closing track “Homecoming Song”. Expelling the truth, Margolin obsessively shouts over synth beats that“There's nothing inside” her. The line reads as both a lament and a proud declaration. Margolin starts to become unhinged in her announcement, panicking that maybe she knew this all along. By the end of this album, Margolin crafts an immensely vulnerable and beguiling experience unlike any other in recent memory. A cathartic journey through someone’s uncertain self-discovery, Porridge Radio gives us the best album to accompany the worldwide pandemonium.