Hunker Down/That Old Blitz Spirit

No sign yet of COVID:The Musical, but “the virus” has now yielded a superbly crafted song.

The context is British, but its precise skewering of the gap between self-congratulory “patriotic” government twaddle-speak and the pandemic’s reality rings true across most of “our” world.

Early last year one of Scotland’s finest songster-guitarists received this tweet from a comedian friend and compatriot:

Kris Drever liked its poetic/songlike nature, and, with Paul ‘Silky’ White’s permission, Kris proceeded to borrow Paul’s words, add his own, and create a song.

One week into isolation, Kris had written Hunker Down/That Old Blitz Spirit.

Click here for the full lyric.

At home in Glasgow in April last year Kris recorded a solo version:

 

 

 

The “finished” version is on Kris’s excellent current album Where the World is Thin, issued in October 2020:

 

A recent remark of Kris’s:

We’re in a crazy situation now where one of the most rebellious things you can do is be decent to people! The individuals at the top of our tree are so horrible that being kind to others, or even to yourself, is kind of like two fingers to them.

Originally from Orkney, Kris Drever is equally remarkable as solo performer or band member, as singer and player, as writer of new songs or interpreter of old ones.

Footnote:

The suitably-phoney “old blitz spirit”-ish image is 2018-vintage, from a city that has never suffered aerial bombardment. I took the photo from the Fremantle-bound platform of Subiaco railway station, looking back through the tunnel, towards Perth.