PORRIDGE RADIO

I can remember where I was the first time I heard Radiohead’s “Creep” (crossing the patch of grass in front of the church at Princess and Clergy). I knew instantly they’d be huge. I felt the same way with Smashing Pumpkins’ “Today” from the Siamese Dream album, Billy Corgan making off into the desert with his ice cream truck, like a giant toddler gone awol. All that hot and cold. And because good things come in threes, I’ll add that “Smells Like Teen Spirit” felt like a revelation and a wake-up call when it came on the radio. I’d been in Canada for nearly a dozen years by then, and yet that might have been the first song that made it okay to put away my copy of London Calling.

Porridge Radio’s breakout single “Sweet” is almost five years old now and so it’s not going to have the same cultural impact. But it has the same insanely catchy effect on first listen (and 1000th), that way of burrowing slightly too deep for it to be good for you. Porridge Radio (they hail from Brighton, on England’s  south coast, and they’re fantastic) announced their break-up this week, just as they head out on tour.