Circus For Sale by Hungrytown
A Review
Hungrytown: Circus for Sale
A review by Jeni Hankins
The mist is coming up from the ground around the trapeze girl's caravan and, as she opens the door, the boy who looks after the horses sees her and thinks he's seen an angel. This is that kind of record which makes images spin in your head like a zoetrope.
The trapeze girl is tired and her dressing gown is deftly mended, but when she’s in full possession of her powers, flying through the popcorned and horsey air of the big top, she could make anyone believe in magic. And then there is her sister – “A girl who eats fire with a smile.”
In Hungrytown’s Circus for Sale, we spin through a world which turns in tandem with ours. We’re catching our reflection in those warped mirrors that line the center pillar of the carousel. Am I riding the silver horse or is that you? This is a pandemic and post-pandemic world where we’re still ourselves, but not feeling like ourselves.
Rebecca Hall and Ken Anderson show us meadows and laurels, the changing of the seasons, shadows and sunlit afternoons but through the curved lens of their vast imaginations. Hall writes the songs in her quiet and direct way, and Anderson fettles and conjures the sonic worlds where Hall’s turns of phrase flicker and shimmer.
You’d be forgiven for thinking you’d wandered onto the sound stage of The Graduate, Love Story, or Harold and Maude. Because though Hungrytown are gracefully influenced by the music of the Fairport Convention and Nick Drake era, this is movie music. Circus for Sale is the soundtrack for the film we all lived during the pandemic and the sequel for the after-life we are living now.
The pull between between gravity, unbreakable things, and the lingering sting or sweetness of words once said and never forgotten are the currency in circulation here. There’s the honesty of a singer who says “Some days I just sing sad songs. Some days I don’t sing songs at all.” And the blunt question she asks the little bird goes, “Why are you pecking at the window wanting to come in?” After all, who wants to be “in” anymore?
When I was listening to Circus For Sale, the last song “Leaving” closed and had me thinking about Hall’s line “please don’t tell your secrets” and the way that she has of writing these profound ideas in straightforward language. I was in a little dream of my own – this record will do that to you, make you daydream – and my player looped back to the first song and Hall singing, “Another year, another year gone down.”
And wasn’t that what it was like? We thought the movie was over, but it was just an intermission in learning to live in the pandemic parallel universe. In our experiments with baking bread or starting a vegetable garden, in our anguish at hearing that someone dear was lost, we thought surely the post-pandemic light was breaking through only to find war and famine and pervasive mendacity on the other side. How is it that Hall can say all of that by simply writing, “I’m sorry that I woke you” in the dreamiest and most delicate shade of her voice?
Ken Anderson masterminds the sound of Circus For Sale like the horse master lining up the ponies and keeping them in the ring with his conductor’s baton while Hall’s voice balances on the back of it all flashing sequins in the spotlight. The sheer quantity of instruments employed and sounds harnessed are noteworthy, but it’s how Anderson instinctually pairs a harpsichord or hammered dulcimer with the moods Hall has established in her writing which pushes this album into cinematic splendor. It’s one of those records you play, and then play again, and again, each time hearing new layers and snatches of lyrics. As you press play again, your line will be, “Wasn’t it easy, wasn’t it fun and a place for us freaks to call home for a while?”
“Circus for sale, tired of running around, setting up in the rain on the outskirts of town.” Thankfully for us, Hungrytown didn’t close up shop during the pandemic. They spent their time organically crafting this album – and it is an album which rewards the listener who hears it from beginning to end. Circus For Sale is part wistful reflection and part forecast of things to come, always conveyed with precisely the right words married to a waterfall of companion folk sounds.
The boy who looks after the horses will swing by the trapeze girl’s caravan on the off chance of seeing her descend her little ladder again and no one will convince him that she’s anything less than an angel. This is a record which presents all of the evidence of our cultural collective culpability for the mayhem in which we live while tantalizing us with a new day, a new sun, and “a morning that brings peace of mind.” In other words, it’s just as complexly devastating and hopeful as we are.
You can hear Hungrytown live across the USA, the UK, and continental Europe on of their year-round tours. Circus For Sale will be released in 2024. You can pre-order it here. In the meantime, if you want to make a start on their music, they have three previous duo albums and two Rebecca Hall albums available in their Bandcamp shop, iTunes, and all streaming services. Top tracks for me are “Hard Way to Learn,” “Any Forgotten Thing,” “Static,” “Falling Star,” and “Calliope” which will put you in the circus frame of mind. And while you’re enjoying all things Hungrytown, you can always become a sustaining supporter of their work and engage in a radical gesture of arts activism by becoming their patron on Patreon!
– Jeni Hankins, London, May 2023
N.B. I have received no compensation for this review. I have known Hungrytown since 2006. I introduced myself to them because they came to Nashville to open for the late David Olney and I was a fan of the Rebecca Hall records. I continue to be a fan and with good reason. You can hear my review of their Further West album by listening to the archive of the radio show I produced with my late father, Greg Hankins, and the musician Billy Kemp or by reading it on the companion blog. I am so excited about Circus For Sale and the future work of Hungrytown.