The British indie rock band Porridge Radio didn’t conform to “Minnesota Nice” when they stopped by the 7th Street Entry on their debut U.S. tour. In the band’s music, led by singer-songwriter Dana Margolin, there’s no room for passive aggression or mild manners. Margolin uses direct and cutting language to tell it like it is. On Monday night, she didn’t come to mess around.

Porridge Radio’s breakthrough came when their sophomore album, Every Bad, claimed a Mercury Prize nomination for Album of the Year in 2020. They didn’t walk home with the U.K. music award, but the recognition made many people wonder just what the underground group had done to excite the judges. 

One of the defining characteristics of Porridge Radio’s music is the unique, intensely grungy scrambling of words embodying desperate yearning. That expression was even more potent live. Opening with “7 Seconds,” Margolin unleashed frantic paranoia from the get-go. She ended the song by asking, “Do you ever think about / Who you were then and who you are now?” again and again.

The way Margolin repeated the same phrases over and over on the majority of tracks isn’t redundant — the litany just emphasizes emotion. On “Birthday Party,” she sang, “I don’t wanna be loved,” 57 times, and surprisingly, it didn't lead to semantic satiation. In a strained voice with breathy tension, the verbal rhythm only further drilled the idea into us. With 58 stops on the four-month tour, Margolin could scream that incantation well over 3,000 times. 

Slightly less repetitive, but equally powerful, on “Give/Take,” she asked “And how do I say no?” 11 times. A request came later during “Splintered,” from the recently released album Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder to the Sky when she sang, “Don’t cut me out” 31 times. On “The Rip,” Margolin’s accelerating vocals climaxed until her voice cracked as she reiterated, “And now my heart aches.”

Her repetition didn’t ease up between tracks. She thanked the audience for coming, which was met by a “Thank you for here!” yell in the crowd. “Thank you for being here?” she questioned. “Thank you for here, thank you for here, thank you for here,” she mimicked.

“Indie rock” is too tame a label to describe Porridge Radio’s music, which fluctuates between genres. Tracks like “7 Seconds” teeter on the edge of indie pop with their twinkling keys, but there’s something too eerie under the surface holding them back. The band’s sound brushes equally as close to post-punk, but there’s nothing nonchalant about the way Margolin screams into the microphone. The jagged, quiet-to-loud dynamics on tracks like “Back to the Radio” and “Sweet” could be compared to the work of U.K. bands like Dry Cleaning and Sorry, but unlike those groups, Margolin’s performance is anything but stoic.

It may seem like the significance of the set revolved around Margolin’s clever and biting lyricism, but her cathartic movement cemented emotion. Throwing energy back and forth into the mic stand, there seemed to be a pain in her eyes — the face you see when someone you care about is close to breaking into tears. It wasn't just what she was singing, it was how she was singing it.

Aggression and energy continually built over the course of the set. Near the end, Margolin warned that if anyone wanted to start a pit, the song to do it to was “Sweet.” Heads banged and fists pounded, but no one started moshing. That might be because it was a relatively older audience — primarily Millennials and Gen X-ers. Appearing breathless at times, she clearly offered a lot of herself. Standing in the center of the room, a crowd member named Natalie said she could tell that the singer “put her soul into the performance.”

Margolin says what she means, but at times, her words are just questions searching for meaning within herself. Porridge Radio ended the night with an encore that included one final question: “When do I surrender?” on the song “Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder to the Sky.” Standing close to the artist in the Entry’s intimate room, maybe people in the crowd spent the night examining the conflicting desires and fears within themselves too.

As thought-provoking as Margolin’s performance was, opener Adam Gnade’s set was a notably brain-racking part of the night. Before beginning, he told the audience to feel free to step outside if they wanted to talk, then asked if anyone would like to tell a joke onstage. No one took him up on the offer. “This is gonna be different than sh*t you’re used to… I don’t sing. l talk,” he said. Strumming a four string guitar embellished with his name and a skeleton drawing, he dove into a series of dark tracks “about how f*cked up the world is.” The audience remained so silent that you could hear a beer crack open at the bar. He thanked the crowd for their respect. “You guys are really nice. Is that a Minneapolis thing?”

Setlist

7 Seconds

Give/Take

End of Last Year

Circling

Birthday Party

Trying

Good For You

Splintered

U Can Be Happy If U Want To

The Rip

Long

Sweet

Back To The Radio

Encore:

Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To The Sky

Gallery

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