All images by Chloe Sheppard
When we meet on one of the hottest days of 2019 so far, Dana Margolin â the lead vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter for the indie-pop band Porridge Radio â is drinking a Sprite. Itâs the last day of the bandâs tour, and theyâve just bundled out of the van in Dalston, east London, where theyâll play their final show of the run.Dana tells me that during their time away from the van, soundchecks, and gigs, she and her bandmates spent the last week rooting through charity shops. Bassist Maddie and keyboardist Georgie model their best finds in glittery black and red velvet respectively, though Danaâs most prized treasure is not wearable. From a plastic bag, smiling like someone about to show me her delicate and very expensive dog, she unsheathes a clock designed to look like a pizza. âIâd like you to emphasise that weâre very wholesome,â she tells me.She means this as a joke, but to be honest, if wholesomeness is friendship, community, and a genuine love of music, then Porridge Radio might be the most wholesome band in the UK. Born simply of a shared desire to learn to play music, the four-piece have been together for four years. Over that time, theyâve become part of the thriving DIY scenes in Brighton and London, honing their subtly specific sound via various releases, many live performances, and most recently, a pair of glossily-produced new singles.The first, âGive/Take,â released last month, is a black pearl of a pop song â beguiling, unexpected, contradictory â and has picked up praise, as well as radio airplay on 6Music. Today (1 May), the band are releasing their second new track, âDonât Ask Me Twice,â which Dana describes as âway punkier, more dissociativeâ than its predecessor.In honour of the release, and also just because to be real theyâre very much worth knowing, Dana told me about Porridge Radioâs beginnings, their influences, and the contradictions theyâre happy to occupy, as the band prepped for that most recent London show (which was, for the record, a) great, and b) properly heaving.) Hereâs the deal with Porridge Radio:âAbout four years ago, we were all living in Brighton, and kind of didnât really know each other, but somehow all ended up in a band together,â Dana explains. âThatâs how we met, through playing in a band â because it was like, 'Oh you do music, can I do that with you?' It was all kind of accidental.â
âOriginally the band was just something that was like, 'Letâs just have fun with our friends and get better at this and learn how to express ourselves and make ourselves vulnerable,'â she continues. âIt was a very special space to be able to create that, and itâs also how we ended up being good friends.âDana sees learning as theyâve gone along as an extremely important part of Porridge Radioâs DNA, because itâs how they bonded as friends. She tells me, âMaddie couldnât play bass when we started â she was like, 'I just got a bass!' So I said, 'Dâyou wanna be in my band that Iâm having the first practice for next week?' I could barely play, [drummer] Sam could play pretty well â heâd been in bands all his teenage years â but originally it was like, 'Hey, letâs all get together and play these songs and learn how to play together, and make a supportive environment that we can learn and write and have fun in.'âPorridge Radio are a band who can be quite tough to categorise, veering between lo-fi garage, melodic pop, and about a hundred other inflections. Dana doesnât mind the band existing somewhere between the lines, as she reasons that âSome days Iâm like, 'Weâre obviously a pop punk band, and our influences are like, blink-182.' Or Sam will be like, 'Yeah weâre a nu-metal band.' But then some days, Iâm like, 'No weâre completely influenced by like, The Cranberries, and really melodic indie pop.' Sometimes weâre like 'No, weâre a fucking pop band, and all we listen to is PC Music and Charli XCX.' It depends.âShe adds that new track âGive/Takeâ has âbrought out the part of us that has always wanted to be polished pop, and thatâs really exciting. I listen to old stuff, and Iâm like, 'How does it get from that to this?' For one of the tracks on the EP that we made three years ago with West America, we recorded the drums through a laptop microphone, and we were like, 'This sounds cool because it sounds like dogs barking! Thatâs the sound weâre going for!' But thereâs also this other side of us, and âGive/Takeâ has brought that out. All my favourite bands span both sides.ââI hate it when people call us a 'jangly indie band.' Dana expands: âWeâre not that! Thereâs a lot of darkness in the music thatâs very intense, and often thatâs not portrayed in how people talk about us, because maybe we put out a bit of a twee image for a while.âPorridge Radio have also been described as a girl band by some music writers, which, as well as being factually incorrect, feels intrusive. âItâs weird because I donât think of myself as like, âgirlâ predominantly, and gender is something that I donât necessarily fully understand yet. When someone calls you a 'girlband,' it firstly takes away your agency in deciding how you want to look, and then it also takes the words away from you as well. It doesnât allow you to be like, 'I need to figure out how I want to express myself and my gender.'âLots of Porridge Radio tracks explore the concept of having opposing thoughts and feelings all at once. For most people, thatâs a pretty common phenomenon, even though social media and the internet â our main discursive tools â can make it seem like grey areas donât exist. Danaâs more interested in the mess that not knowing how we feel can create: âIâll just throw everything into all my songs,â she says. âI really think that you can have multiple emotions and feelings that completely contradict each other, and you can still believe all of them to be true and feel them all. I think that comes out in the songs, because they are very stream-of-consciousness. It is mostly everything at once cascading down.âOften, music writers have a habit of conjuring music scenes out of thin air, to give a story some narrative. Sometimes, bands donât feel thatâs accurate, but Porridge Radio really see themselves and their success so far as something that has come from the DIY scene theyâre proudly part of. As Dana says, âWeâre definitely part of a scene. Thereâs lots of bands in Brighton and London especially, and I guess the UK DIY scene is where we learned how to play. And itâs where weâve always been able to make friends and get shows and thereâs a very special community of DIY bands in Brighton, London, and throughout the UK whoâve always been really supportive of what weâve been doing.âListen here:Porridge Radio play The Great Escape in Brighton from 9-11 MayYou can find Lauren on Twitter.
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THEY FORMED KIND OF ACCIDENTALLY
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THEYâVE BEEN LEARNING AS THEYâVE PROGRESSED AS A BAND
THEREâS LOTS OF DIFFERENT SIDES TO THEIR SOUNDâŠ
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âŠHOWEVER THERE ARE SOME CATEGORISATIONS THEYâRE KEEN TO RESIST
EMOTIONAL NUANCE IS A KEY ELEMENT OF THEIR MUSIC
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