Gig review: Hungrytown

Published on Wednesday 2 June 2010 19:03

HUNGRYTOWN *** THE VILLAGE, LEITH

SEVEN years ago, Vermont-based husband-and-wife duo Hungrytown, aka Ken Anderson and Rebecca Hall, gave up day-jobs in law and mediaeval literature respectively to travel the world as folk musicians (mediaeval literature being, as Jones cheerfully observed, one of the few pursuits that pays worse). They're patently a labour-of-love outfit, delighted to be doing the rounds of UK folk clubs and small-scale festivals for the next two months, performing mainly original songs that nonetheless sound lifted directly from the pre-electric 1960s US folk boom, or the classic country era.

They opened, for instance, with The Sweetest Flower I Ever Saw, a simple, waltz-time, thwarted-love song delivered a cappella, its winsome melody and traditional-style wording prettily garbed in wistful close harmonies. Though the rest of the set featured accompaniment from both on guitar, with Jones in the lead vocal role and Clark also swapping between banjo, mandolin and harmonica, the music's prevailing mood, tempo and overall style remained largely the same.

As they explained at some length, subjects and lyrics often arose directly from their life experiences, both the everyday and the pivotal, imbuing their performance with an appealingly wide-eyed honesty and warmth, while Jones's limpidly lovely voice glided between forlorn and serene, delicate and forthright.

Cumulatively, however, the songs' shortage of contrast, and of anything significant to distinguish them from the sum of their influences, resulted in them blurring somewhat forgettably together.