PANDEMIC SONGS

Pandemic Songs is songwriter Robb Johnson's chronicle in song of the unprecedented events of the first half of 2020. His critically-acclaimed family histories of the 20th Century Gentle Men and Ordinary Giants use song to dramatise past lives and narrate significant historical events and processes. Pandemic Songs uses songs to provide a media-free perspective of contemporary history, with thirteen tracks written between March and June of this year, that record and comment on the global pandemic, from Robb's local UK perspective. The songs are angry, sad, affectionate, elegiac, satirical, anxious, and compassionate. They celebrate our lives in lockdown and the endurance of our keyworkers, and catalogue the vanities, incompetence, hypocrisy and failures of those in power. Pandemic Songs was recorded with a socially-distanced pared-down version of The Irregulars; John Forrester on bass and vocals, Arvin Johnson on drums, percussion and Spanish guitar, and Fae Simon on vocals. The result is a powerful, visceral album, a significant creative response to these very significant times. Robb Johnson is now widely recognised as one of the UK's finest songwriters: 'An English original', - The Guardian.