Hungrytown - Little Bird

With their new album Circus For Sale out now to rave reviews, and a tour of the UK beckoning, Vermont-based indie-folk duo HUNGRYTOWN returns with a new single from the record: “Little Bird”.  A sunshine pop-inflected reflection on the freedom of flight shot through with an undercurrent of melancholy, it's out August 2 on all digital platforms.

HUNGRYTOWN (singer-guitarist REBECCA HALL and multi-instrumentalist/vocalist KEN ANDERSON) have never stopped moving throughout 2024, playing tour dates on the road in the US as three singles – “Another Year”, “Feel Like Falling,” and “Tuesday Sun” paved the way to their fourth album (and first for Big Stir Records). Hailed upon its release as “a truly wonderful album” by the UK's venerable Terrascope and “beautiful and charming” by Jersey Beat, CIRCUS FOR SALE is perhaps best encapsulated in Monolith Cocktail's effusive review: “There is a beauty and calmness to it that one can lose themself in and ignore and forget briefly the day-to-day turmoil that surrounds them.” 

And while this is all true, the album is no idyll blissfully shutting out the world, as can be heard on “Little Bird”. Cut from the same sweetly shimmering, radio-friendly cloth as their most widely-heard single, “Tuesday Sun”, the new standalone track is also likewise imbued with a sense of longing that doesn't flinch from modern reality – particularly that of the pandemic. Rebecca explains the song's inspiration: “It's a snapshot of pre-vaccine lockdown at our home in rural Vermont. I spent much time in our bright upstairs room writing and playing music. A robin outside kept knocking on the window, perhaps to gain entry? Maybe it knew that I would have given anything to trade places.” (For the single's unique sleeve art, the titular robin has been realized in watercolors by Larysa Bulbenko, violist for Hungrytown's BSR labelmates The Armoires, maintaining the handmade and collaborative art aesthetic of Circus For Sale.)

The envy of that bird's freedom is manifested both on the lyrics – “ Aren't you the lucky one? Why are you trying to get in? If I were you I'd keep on flying, floating on the breeze” – and the lilting melody, so sweetly delivered in Hall's trademark ethereal-but-worldly confessional voice. It's driven home by Anderson's arrangement, one of the most propulsive on the album with its introductory harmonica and prominent folk-rock drums, bearing the song forward in contrast to the often delicate chamber pop sounds that characterize much of Circus For Sale (but all of a timeless '60s via the 21st Century piece). 

“Little Bird” thus serves as a memento of the isolation of the pandemic era, and a fitting song of movement as HUNGRYTOWN returns to the road with the new songs of CIRCUS FOR SALE as their focus. “So may places to see,” sings Rebecca, and as the band takes flight again, there are many places to see them as well!