Porridge Radio’s Dana Margolin on Finding Her Way Through a ‘Fog’ of Heartbreak and Exhaustion
All artists bare their hearts, but none quite like Dana Margolin. Whether she’s rocking out or inward, the frontwoman and principal songwriter of Porridge Radio sings with an arresting, visceral intensity — at her most impassioned, Margolin’s vocals sound like musical form of sobbing — that never comes across as performative.
So, it’s surprising — and heartening — to find an upbeat, almost breezy Margolin in pajamas at her London home once the Zoom cameras are turned on. The close-cropped, blond Joan of Arc hairstyle she wore in previous years is now shoulder length and brown, and she punctuates her comments with an easy laugh.
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This may have something to do with Porridge Radio’s fourth album, Clouds in the Sky They Will Always Be There for Me, which Secretly Canadian will release on Oct. 18. (The tour touches down in the United States in January.) It’s a breakthrough record for Margolin and the band, and a cathartic sequence of songs in which the former anthropology major reclaims her identity after losing her way in what she describes as the “fog” of an intense breakup, after months of touring and promotion behind the British band’s excellent last album, 2022’s Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To The Sky, its first to hit the top 40 in the United Kingdom. “I have let go of my needs to be perfect and to be pure,” Margolin says. “I just want to have a nice life. I want to be with the people I love.”
Clouds in the Sky, which was produced by Big Thief recording engineer Dom Monks and recorded live, finds Porridge Radio putting the hype of its 2020 Mercury Prize nomination well behind it and achieving a new level of layered and nuanced artistry — acoustic guitars, piano and quiet jazz-inflected drumming — that builds upon the vibe of Waterslide, and the band’s punchy post-punk past. The poetry of Margolin’s lyrics has also evolved. Her songs have become more sophisticated without sacrificing the emotional wallop of her earlier work — a conscious effort on her part, and one of the subjects she discusses below with Billboard, along with the visual art she also creates, and her tendency to fall in love easily.
You look very chill in pajamas right now, but on Porridge Radio’s records and at your concerts, you perform with an intensity that most humans cannot or will not approach. Do you live life outside of music like that?
You know I never really realized that not everybody experiences the world as I do until a few years ago. And it was quite shocking to me to find out that most people don’t have this kind of constant experience of their emotions.
What are the pros and cons of living with that kind of sensitivity?
It’s often very painful and exhausting to always feel like that. It’s a lot — but also, I feel that I have very strong connections with the people in my life, and I get to make music and share it, and people come towards me because of it. I always had this fear that it would push people away. It took having a really bad relationship that made me feel like I was too much. Suddenly, I was like wait, other people aren’t like this. They don’t have this intensity and why am I so weird? I’m always experiencing all the feelings of everything past and the future. Now, I’m okay with it. I think some people would kill to feel as much. Sometimes it’s incredibly difficult and painful but it’s given me a lot of love and connection and beauty, Also, I get to be in a band and go travel the world with my friends. I feel lucky even though sometimes I’m despairing.
It’s like in “God of Everything Else,” where you sing, “You always said that I’m too intense/ It’s not that I’m too much/ You just don’t have the guts.”
[Laughs.] That one is kind of cheesy. It’s so on the nose, but in a way, I was just like, right.
These songs all started as poetry, right?
Yeah, in a way. They all started from me writing with more focus on the words. I was challenging myself to be a better writer. My songs always started as poetry in some way. With these especially, I felt that.
You refer to a swallow in some songs and in one, a sparrow. Did you have specific symbolism in mind in using this bird imagery?
I was looking for a symbol for a particular relationship that I was describing, and I was drawn to birds and the symbolism around birds. Especially with swallows, it was this idea of somebody who goes away and comes back, or somebody who is there and then they just disappear. I was thinking of migrating birds, and this idea of somebody who needs to travel because it’s in their heart. They need to go away. They need to be far away from you, but they always come back. Then I think by the time it turned into a sparrow, the idea of, I thought you were one thing — and you were something else.
You sing about you having to be someone that you aren’t.
Yeah. That’s me.
“God of Everything Else” reminds me of the Porridge Radio song “7 Seconds” in terms of the emotions that it evokes. “7 Seconds” is about a self-destructive relationship as well. Was that the same person, or do you fall in love easily because you’re so vulnerable?
You know, I do fall in love so easily, unfortunately. But no, there are multiple relationships. They’re from different periods of my life and very different people.
Dreams figure a lot into your songs. Is that a literary device for you, or do you remember and record your dreams?
I’ve always had very intense dreams. It’s not even a practice of writing down my dreams. It’s just that I have so many. I enjoy leaning into this idea of a dreamlike state, where the dreams I’m having whilst I’m awake and the dreams I’m having whilst I’m asleep are blending into each other. And I’m not sure which is which. What I like about poem or song is that something can be presented as real life, and you can’t necessarily tell if it’s a dream, something that really happened, a fantasy or a daydream.
Where was your head at when you wrote these songs?
I spent a long time when I was writing these songs feeling incredibly depressed and having this extreme sense of burnout. This feeling of fog that is enveloping me as I go around my life — of being unable to distinguish myself and my surroundings from these fantasies and imagined versions of what’s happening. I really wanted to bring that feeling into the songs which I think is what I almost do. The main one that really does that is “In a Dream I’m a Painting,” which was maybe the most literal version of that.
Was the burnout you were experiencing from a heavy touring schedule and making up dates postponed during the pandemic?
Yeah, definitely. We played over a hundred shows in a year. That doesn’t include the six months before that year that we were touring. We just didn’t stop. We were touring two albums and releasing one of them in the middle of that tour, and I was so tired. I felt like I had to do everything, but this is the first time I have had this opportunity to do this. I really wanted to — had to — prove myself, and I had to do it justice. The end result of that was I said yes to everything. We were playing loads and loads of shows. I was also doing interviews all the time and doing promos, doing sessions. And we were traveling. It took everything out of me.
Then towards the end of that year, I fell in love with someone and all these feelings of intense burnout, sadness and exhaustion were tying into this excitement and potential, and it was quite confusing. Then we got home, and I suddenly had nothing to do. I was just functioning and like, who am I? I didn’t know how to do anything, like go and have a coffee or see my friends. I hadn’t been home for so long, I was like, “Hey, can you ask me to hang out?”
And traveling the world on a tour has to change you as a person?
Yeah, you become a version of yourself that is constantly in motion, that has not quite caught up with yourself.
The covers of previous Porridge Radio albums have been your artwork. The cover of Clouds in the Sky They Will Always Be There for Me, is a photograph of you looking at a birdlike sculpture. How did that come about?
I made this sculpture of a swallow, and I made it whilst I was writing these songs because I was really focused on this idea of the swallow. I’d also been doing lyric paintings that reflected the songs either in their states as poems before they became songs, or after they’d been put into songs. I had all these different images. When we were recording the album, at that point we didn’t know what it was going to be called. I remember talking to Georgie [Stott], who plays keys, about what it should be. And somehow, we both secretly arrived at this idea that it should be a photo.
I was thinking that it should be a photo of the swallow sculpture. I hadn’t finished making it, but I knew that I wanted it to be a mobile which fit into this [Centre] Pompidou show we did in April 2024, which was this huge live show my sister directed which had all these shadows and puppets. Somehow, we realized that I should be in the photo, but then because of that, I needed to find somebody who could take the photo that I had in my head.
A friend sent me the work of about 20 photographers. I saw Steve Gullick’s work, and I thought he could capture this image that I had in my head. Luckily, he followed us on Instagram. I sent him a message that just said would you be interested in doing this. He said, “Yeah, let’s have a phone call.” I described it to him and did a sketch of the album cover and showed it to him. Then we spent a whole day in my art studio playing around with the swallow. My sister was there as well giving movement direction. He managed to capture the image that I had in my head. He really brought it to life. I love this picture.
Weren’t you inspired after seeing some of Alexander Calder’s mobiles and sculptures?
It was around the release of the last record. I was in New York and went to the Whitney [Museum of American Art]. They had this video playing of Alexander Calder’s Circus, and I fell in love. It was so whimsical in such a serious way —and so beautiful. I spent a long time watching documentaries about him and thinking about mobiles and shadows. I’ve always enjoyed the way that sculpture exists and interacts with the space, the world it’s in. I think the swallow mobile I made is very close to his work.
I love your word paintings. Have you gotten a proper gallery exhibit?
Not a proper one, no. I would love to have one, actually. Very fun. I have a lot of paintings from this album that I don’t quite know what to do with.
I first heard “Sick of the Blues” as a single before I heard the album. I loved it then, but where it falls at the end of the album makes it all the more powerful. It functions as both culmination of a journey and the start of a new one. Was that what you were trying to accomplish with the track list?
Yeah, exactly. We were all kind of amused because we didn’t know the first single was going be “Sick of the Blues,” which, for us, was the closing piece that ties the album all together. If you start with [the album’s first track,] “Anybody,” it’s this intense introduction that takes you through everything else that you’re going to experience across the album. Then you end with “Sick of the Blues,” which is just like oh, f–k it.
“I’m going to make it. I’m going to get through this.”
Exactly. It’s like — “I don’t believe this yet, but I will at some point. I’m just going to hope for the best and go for it.” And that was why it came at the end.
In “Sick of the Blues,” you sing, “I’m sick of the blues, I’m in love with my life again/ I’m sick of the blues, I love you more than anything.” It makes the listener think, “What do you love more than anything? Life or the person you lost?” You’ve done that with other songs, like “7 Seconds” — the lyrics are open to interpretation.
I think it is important that people come to the songs with what they have and what they need from them.
Based on the song credits, it looks like you work collaboratively with your bandmates.
This was the first time that I really felt comfortable having those credits with everyone. Even though the process was very similar in that I wrote these songs on my own, I showed them to the others, and over months and months, we arranged them together. We also did the preproduction together, and we were all in the studio together recording. It was all mixed with us together.
It felt like everyone was more a part of it than they ever had been. Their input was what made the making of this album feel fresh, even though we have been a band for years. Me and Georgie and Sam have made music together and been close friends for about ten years now, but this felt like the first time in a lot of ways that it was ours, and that I was really relying on them.
When I was researching this story, a lot of the press was about Porridge Radio’s nomination for the Mercury Prize. Now that you’ve come so far from that, with this album, where do you see Porridge Radio as a unit, a group of artists?
It’s funny. We’d already been a band for about five years, and then suddenly, the industry said, “Oh, this is a hot new band.” We weren’t. It was chaotic at the beginning, with us figuring out where we were in relation to each other. And it was me kind of figuring out I had all this emotional outburst to give and found the space to do it. I was like, “Oh, no one cares about this, but this is for us.”
Suddenly we’re this hype band and I’m getting the Mercury nomination. I was like, “This is amazing, because this means that I’m going to be able to do this as a job at some point.” I also remember being almost cynical about it. Like, the music industry chooses you for a minute, and then it spits you back out again.
And then came the endless touring.
We ended up touring a really long time, and I got so completely jaded by the whole industry — by the way you’re expected to tour and live. It feels like everyone is expecting you to do everything, you’re not really making much money, and you’re supposed to be so grateful for this thing that you have that is extremely painful and physical. I’ve seen so many friends go through this kind of whirlwind and come out exhausted, disappointed and alienated.
And now with this album I think we’ve made the best thing we’ve ever made. It’s so exciting to me. I loved writing and recording these songs. I’m excited to release it and tour it. I’m like, “That’s enough, right?” My goal is to enjoy my life; to just be in it and not worry too much if anyone cares — because sometimes people care and sometimes, they don’t. I’m letting go. I’m releasing my expectations of myself.
You feel like that’s finally happening.
I think this record has allowed me to do that, and even in the process of recording it’s the first time that I felt like I could be anything that I needed to be whilst recording. I mean, I was crying for about a week of making this, and I made it. Maybe what I’ve learned from this is that I’m allowed to be intense, and I’m allowed to have peace.
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