Mercury Prize nominees
Porridge Radio
follow the sweeping, intentionally fortified sound of their third album,
Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder to the Sky
, with the more fragile
Clouds in the Sky They Will Always Be There for Me
. Essentially a breakup album, it captures project leader
Dana Margolin
grappling with the end of a short but intense relationship as well as burnout and the increasingly adversarial state of the music industry. With this new set of songs in hand, many of which began as poems, the group engaged producer
Dom Monks
, known for his work as engineer for
Big Thief
and
Laura Marling
, among many others. Their first time working with
Monks
, the album also represents the band's first recording with new bassist
Dan Hutchins
and their first time with members and a producer all together in one room. The resulting
finds
still recognizably visceral and volatile but also a little wearier and occasionally resigned, as on the eerie, semi-rambling "In a Dream I'm a Painting" and on penultimate track "Pieces of Heaven." The latter song opens with arpeggiated guitar, a flute-y synth melody, minimal bass, and light cymbal taps behind gradually crescendoing waves of lyrics and more-active drums -- although it never hits an anticipated boiling point, with
Margolin
instead restating how tired she is. Another song arguably in that category is "Wednesday," which offers the brittlely delivered lines "Sing me a sad song and dream all my dreams with me/Oh, shadow, you will always be there for me." The band do hit that flashpoint elsewhere, with songs like the opener "Anybody," the skittering "A Hole in the Ground," and especially the resentful "God of Everything Else" all trying to stay contained but giving way to desperation or frustration. The album closes on the indie rock over-it anthem "Sick of the Blues," a singalong that gets the whole band involved and even breaks out a trumpet solo at the end, as if to emphasize that
may be down but she's not out. ~ Marcy Donelson