Porridge Radio – Machine Starts to Sing Review

Ten years on from some tremendous music, and Porridge Radio has called time. Their final offering as a band, Machine Starts to Sing, is a bit of a heartbreaker. This suggestion of now finding their footing, to now coax song from the ever-grinding gears of the music industry. Such is the case for this final offering, an EP which allows the band a comfortable stage exit. They are still afraid, still boisterous. Creativity does not end because the band does. Machine Starts to Sing, like the rest of their works, will forever be open to interpretation. It now enters a new phase, though, where the work begins to last longer than the band. Touching moments throughout this four-track EP are inevitable, and the opening title track is, as brutal as it may be, some of the band’s best work.  

A sense of occasion may be the reason for that, the finality that comes and the slight increase in instrumental and lyrical quality. Whatever the reason, Machine Starts to Sing is a remarkable opener. Contradiction has been the route through these later releases from Porridge Radio. An album like Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder to the Sky hears the band swept up in the non-specifics and yet the indie rock sound they pursued never caught on. It was too close to the usual offerings. Machine Starts to Sing provides four tracks of very different quality, as though the band were pursuing that broader sound for the sake of fitting in. Yet the violent imagery presented with the childbirth of OK is a wild contrast to the acoustic sense. Such is the joy of Machine Starts to Sing, the best part of Porridge Radio at their best. Porridge Radio struggles not with the emotional quality but the lyrical consistency.  

There is no doubting the heartfelt sense and the urgency of these lyrics but sometimes they do not find their way through well enough. Whether that is the passive sense of waiting or the direct heartbreaks heard on OK, it feels a little shortsighted. Dancing and crying on Don’t Want to Dance feel like relatively tame parallels. In that instance, Porridge Radio has space to move around the tonal sense, the triumph of the instrumental qualities and vocal power utterly crucial here. Machine Starts to Sing has a passive tone which may have acted as a roadblock on previous Porridge Radio projects, but it also has a sense of completion which is rare for any artist to find. These are, allegedly, the final notes the band will lay.  

Should this be the end then it is a fitting one. Another solid entry into a discography with more than enough to it. A sound which should have, could have, been a little bit stronger. Machine Starts to Sing ends Porridge Radio with the same qualities and shortcomings the band had dealt with during their creative peak. It sounds as though they are at loggerheads. Promising moments are found within but nothing which makes good on the build of the last five years. Closer I’ve Got a Feeling (Stay Lucky) has an almost inevitable growth to its instrumentals, and it is this predictability which stings most. Porridge Radio is no more – as of June they will have played their last show – and their last EP is a four-track collection which defines their style these last ten years.