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

“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 a song, Dana argues, the writer can always hide behind the tricks of the music and well-worn techniques such as repetition. “In a poem, though,” says Dana, “it’s just words and that’s it.” 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, the brutal collapse of a relationship and – crucially – Dana’s own increasing immersion in her craft as an artist. “A lot of this album is about a more frenetic and desperate kind of love,” says Dana, “it is about completely losing my sense of self in a relationship, and the deep residue of insecurity and pain that lingered and clouded a new relationship.” Songs that were written as love songs – like In A Dream I’m A Painting – took on new meanings as Margolin viewed the songs with a new distance. “There was a lot of love and confusion, all interspersed with exhaustion and pain.”