Porridge Radio are breaking up. The Brighton band fronted by Dana Margolin shared the news alongside an announcement of its final new release. A new EP called The Machine Starts to Sing features songs recorded during the sessions for last year’s Clouds in the Sky They Will Always Be There for Me, and is out Feburary 21 on Secretly Canadian. One of those songs “Don’t Want to Dance” is out today; listen to it below.
“This is the last new music from Porridge Radio and marks the end of the band,” Margolin stated. “The songs on this EP are an important part of Clouds in the Sky They Will Always Be There for Me, and mean a lot to us. We are excited for you to hear them. This band has been our life, we’re family now. These tours will be our last. Thanks so much for listening.”
Porridge Radio begin their final tour next week. The group’s final show is currently scheduled to take place on May 10 in Bucharest, Romania.
Porridge Radio formed in Brighton, England in 2015 with a lineup of Margolin, bassist Maddie Ryall, keyboardist Georgie Stott, and drummer Sam Yardley that would last through 2023. Their first album, Rice, Pasta and Other Fillers, came out in 2016, but they began attracting serious, international attention in 2020 for their label debut Every Bad and its incendiary single “Sweet.” That record’s follow-up, 2022’s Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder to the Sky, expanded on its predecessor’s sound, as Margolin’s lyrics became infused with anxiety over her newfound visibility. Ryall departed the group in 2023, and Porridge Radio’s fourth and final album, the gently devastating Clouds in the Sky They Will Always Be There for Me, came out last October.
“I like the idea of something being so changeable and self-contradictory that it can mean opposite things within the same phrase,” Margolin said in a 2020 interview with Pitchfork. “And if you repeat it over and over again, you’re forced to think in another way every time you say it. And just saying things over and over again kind of makes them true.”
