Into the Circus: Sheffield’s Rock ’n’ Roll Circus returns for its second year with a genre-defying line-up
The circus returns to Sheffield.
Photo: Rock N Roll Circus
Once again, Sheffield is hosting its very own circus — of the rock ’n’ roll variety. The Steel City’s Rock ’n’ Roll Circus returns to Don Valley Bowl for its second year after a riotous debut in 2023. 2024’s bill sees a lineup even more versatile than the festival’s debut, featuring indie veterans Richard Hawley, Milburn and The Divine Comedy, dance-pop stars Becky Hill and Joel Corry and everything in-between.
Indie rock, folk-rock, orchestral pop, dance, electronica, ska — it’s all on offer under the circus tent roof of Don Valley Bowl, along with circus performances galore. It’s only in Sheffield that you can stare at a fire-breather minutes before watching Jake Bugg.
I’ve been lucky enough to have been invited back for the festival’s second year, and I return to the circus for another weekend of eclectic splendour. Read on for my run-down of the weekend’s best (and worst) appearances.
After a relatively lukewarm appearance from Liverpool’s The Coral (a fresh-faced Charlie Salt of Blossoms couldn’t even help lift the performance out of cider-sipping complacency), it’s time for Neil Hannon and co, otherwise known as The Divine Comedy. The group’s mastermind Hannon has been a not-quite-national-treasure for over twenty years now, and his appearance at Don Valley Bowl is an expected joy.
The setlist sees giddy renditions of the obvious singles (Something For The Weekend, Songs of Love), fan-favourite lyrical treasures from the vaults (Our Mutual Friend, Generation Sex) and left-field choices of overlooked quality (Have You Ever Been In Love). Despite some horrendous sound mixing, Hannon powers through with the same keen wit that’s kept him afloat throughout his prolific career. After all, a poorly-mixed drum sound is no match for the tragicomic literary triumphs found in every other line of A Lady Of A Certain Age.
The bookish ringleader’s dry smile remains intact from the fame-struck rush of Becoming More Like Alfie to the climactic jive of National Express… Tom Jones lives in each of us as we swing our hips to the kitschy shuffle.
The headline act fast approaches. Richard Hawley, known to some as the Steel City’s Sinatra, is something of an urban legend — a local man whose favourite pubs are known to most romantics in Sheffield, and yet a name that won’t mean much to the vast majority of the UK public. To most, he’s a relatively unheard-of musician. To Sheffield, he’s nothing short of an icon.
Hawley as the headline act only really makes sense when in Sheffield. Here, he’s something more than a musician on a bill. He’s the musical dramatist for the city. He provides the streets with a swooning pulse of melodrama (Tonight The Streets Are Ours), he finds time for the everyday struggles of the hillside workers (People) and he can write the sort of starry orchestral-pop cuts that can unite the most estranged of souls from opposite edges of town (The Ocean). It’s all on show under the circus tent: sound issues are fixed, guitar soundscapes flow like wine.
With a quiff that a rapidly-ageing Morrissey would break bones for, and a pearl-blue suede jacket taken straight out of a Hard Rock Café glass cabinet, Hawley addresses his audience with subdued swagger. It’s neither the boorish pantomime of the Gallaghers, nor the zany energy of bill-mates The Divine Comedy… just a steady, subtle air of arrogance. Hawley’s comfortable on home turf.
There’s a mutual respect between the singer/songwriter and his audience, forged in steel. It’s palpable under the circus’ arched top. I can’t help but sway along to Open Up Your Door as I admire the hum of local recognition. The strings toll like bells; lost and longing, as I wonder whether, for just one night, I can — spiritually, mind you — partake in the South Yorkshire mass.
It’s worth noting how well-suited The Divine Comedy and Richard Hawley are for tonight’s affair. Both Hannon and Hawley prowl their respective musical worlds with tenderness, attention to detail and an ear for string lines that steal your heart. Maybe it’s just the Scott Walker connection, but Hannon and Hawley feel tailor-made to share the stage. The sixties are alive and well, bubbling with the sound of vinyl crackle and vintage twelve-strings, in their respective marriages of the rock ’n’ roll band with the baton-led orchestra.
After a headline set studded with gold, Hawley retires for the night: a local prophet’s work well and truly done. Not before sneering at the defeated Tories and rival club Sheffield United, though — only then, of course, can he sleep.
After Thursday’s performances, the circus disassembles its drum kits in favour of the mixing desk. Whilst the previous night saw BBC Radio 6 music dads in their natural habitat, today sees their teenaged daughters arrive at the scene for acts such as Issey Cross, Joel Corry, Ben Ellis and, of course, Becky Hill.
Unfortunately, not all who are welcomed up to the stage mixing desk are worthy of their time under the tent. The reality TV star Joel Corry is one of the most unlikeable acts I’ve had the misfortune of suffering. More intent on flexing his biceps than focusing on playing music with any sort of merit, the plastic-smile influencer leads the crowd through a set so unsurprising and uninspired that it seems like it must have been largely based on a Spotify algorithm.
I eventually exit out into the evening air, met with the instantaneously more compelling mixes of Rose Gray. The North Londoner shone with all the earnest enthusiasm of an up-and-coming techno starlet.
A highlight comes in Gray’s creative use of an Underworld sample — the swirling synthesisers of Dark & Long (Dark Train) are taken from their bleak context in Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting, and placed into the cool-air party of Don Valley Bowl. Gray is undoubtedly one to watch.
Friday’s headliner Becky Hill does her usual. A Radio 1 mainstay, her songs have practically soundtracked our lives (whether we realised it or not). Everything from rain-sodden car journeys with your mum to Asda, to your first trip to the local nightclub… Hill’s been singing in the background throughout it all. The crowd erupted as the walking hit factory graced the stage, churning through chart singles such as Gecko or My Heart Goes.
Whilst Hill’s set seems like the antithesis of the ‘rock ’n’ roll’ in Rock ’n’ Roll Circus, she’s undoubtedly a feel-good headline act that takes the festival to new, broader demographics. Highlight track Afterglow is a fast-paced dose of night-out euphoria, though it does beg the question as to how many of the audience members singing along to the words have even had their first legal pint, let alone hopped from one club to the next. Teach them young, I suppose.
Friday done and dusted, it’s time for Saturday’s mix of talent. The Selecter are, without a doubt, the blinding light of surprise when it comes to the circus’ 2024 lineup. Don’t get me wrong, I was looking forward to the 2-tone ska veterans’ set as much as any twenty-something fan of Shane Meadows TV re-runs, but they surpassed all expectations. Vocalist Pauline Black is a leftist slogan-spitting machine, rallying for NHS appreciation and interracial unity as she owns the stage in her tight-knit modette attire. She’s effortlessly cool — with the pipes to back it up. The Selecter’s set, with all the rip-roaring energy of The Specials’ seminal Live From The Moonlight Club, feels like a skinhead fever dream… in the best way possible.
Whilst it’s disappointing that neither Babyshambles nor The Libertines could have been booked for the festival, frontman/vocalist/guitarist Pete Doherty is still a more than welcome addition. Doherty slurs his way through various masterful cuts of his career — the new Libertines crowd-pleaser Run takes on a dusty melancholy played only on a battered acoustic, and What Katie Did stumbles along with all the bleary-eyed wonder that the original studio version alluded to. He engages with the crowd like a beloved pub local, singing lager-lullabies as the evening slips away.
The veteran hedonist toed the line between a vaguely embarrassing shambles and an eye-opening ode to life… there aren’t many songwriters who can do that.
Photo: Rock N Roll Circus
Saturday headliners Milburn take to the stage as the sky darkens; haircuts taken from Blossoms, shaggy guitar lines from Arctic Monkeys. However, the band’s melodies aren’t quite as infectious as the Stockport indie-poppers, nor are they half as inventive as Alex Turner’s quartet in their quick-witted prime. The headline set fizzes and festers with a steady stream of energy: simple, effective indie rock song-writing, but nothing too inspiring. Other than a general spirit of beery enthusiasm, I can’t find any aspect, lyrically or musically, to cling onto.
Although, as I begin to mentally jot down criticisms of the band, it becomes clear that I am very much in the minority. Henderson’s Relish bucket hats bob like a spirit vinegar ocean. Pints of lager are catapulted across the tent, echoing the trajectories of acrobat performances prior. Teenage boys form mosh pits, married couples embrace in drunken affection and even infants, surely not much more than a couple of years old, giggle and flail their arms whilst sat on the shoulders of their Milburn-devotee parents.
Like Hawley, Milburn are another example of a proud Sheffield export, adored by their neighbours with intense Yorkshireman vigour. Whilst I personally can’t find the magic in their Monkeys-lite romp, a whole circus of fanatics certainly can. Maybe I just need to keep trying, and it’ll all become obvious.
Three days in the circus can make your head spin. Whilst I’m not sure that this year’s event quite managed to reach the same monumental heights as last year’s one-two-punch of Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds and Self Esteem’s emotional homecoming show (well, could anything?), it certainly succeeded in delving into new sounds, broadening its horizons, and introducing a wide range of people to the festival-circus-hybrid.
Throughout it all was the spirit of Sheffield. Ultimately, that’s what kept the bass drum kicking, and the acrobats swinging. The city has truly embraced its new yearly carnival, and I look forward to seeing what’s next for Rock ’n’ Roll Circus in 2025.