By Giliann Karon
Brighton-based Porridge Radio has announced their second LP, Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To The Sky. On the lead single “Back to the Radio,” singer Dana Margolin soars into the stars to bring an exhilarating and restless track back down to earth.
Margolin’s commandeering chant guides the listener through gusts of loneliness while basking in the unknown. She chokes through a somber story of a relationship whose best days are behind it. Her tense vibrato emphasizes “We cannot get better if we can’t talk about it,” she courageously professes.
Celestial synths and choppy bass strokes flood the negative space. Keyboardist Georgie Scott’s delicate playing lightens the otherwise heavy track. Instead of cruising into triumphant catchphrases like on Every Bad, this single gradually builds from a reluctant confrontation into an explosive stream of consciousness. In the second chorus, buoyant backing harmonies force open the proverbial floodgates and the track bursts to a lustral singalong.
“I wrote it at the end of 2019 when we were gearing up for the release of Every Bad and I felt like a lot of things were coming that I wasn’t sure I knew how to handle. The song grew out of a feeling of intense loneliness and being unprepared for what everybody was promising me was about to happen — and a strong desire to escape without knowing what I wanted to escape to. To me there’s a huge feeling of catharsis in this song, of letting go and letting it sweep you away,” Margolin wrote in a press release.