The Brighton band were on the brink of stardom when the pandemic hit. But lockdown hasn’t been all bad…
Last February, Porridge Radio were playing some gigs in Oslo and getting ready for their lives to change. They were about to release their second album, Every Bad – their first since signing to indie label Secretly Canadian – and they knew they were on the brink of something big. Originating from the Brighton DIY scene, the band had recorded their first album in a shed and spent five years organising their own tours. Now they were about to fly to the States to play South by Southwest, followed by a US tour with Car Seat Headrest, followed by a headline tour and festival season back in the UK.
“I was ready to be on the road full-time, not having a break, not thinking about myself,” says frontwoman Dana Margolin. News stories about coronavirus, then, were just background noise. “We’d heard rumours, but we were all swept up in our own worlds. You can’t really plan for the worst – you just have to plan for things to happen.”
