Gigs are back. Actual, live, face-to-face, beer-and-sweat gigs. Last week I went to see one of my favourite artists. One of the brave, dipping-her-toes-in-the-world-again, pioneers. The theatre was half-empty, so I guess not everyone is ready yet. Probably thanks to a large scale loss of trust in anything said by politicians, media, medics or experts of any kind anymore. But that’s another subject. This one is about how the gig was full of old songs. A lot from the 2019 album, which I happen to like a lot, but only one new song. ‘I was supposed to be launching a new album now,’ she announced from the stage, ‘but then what happened happened, and time seemed to slip on by’.

My instinct at this point said, it was a pandemic, damnit, there was nothing else for a musician to do but make the next record. Then I thought about all the new music released in the last eighteen months. And how almost none of it was any good. There were a couple of great records, I think, made despite the pandemic, but so far as I can tell, none made because of it.

We’ve spent a large part of this same eighteen-month period talking about the Disaster Cycle, tracking society’s progress through the various different stages. Mainly the Heroic and Honeymoon phases, where the emphasis is on finding expedient solutions to the firt tranche of crisis-generated challenges. I had thought that this expedience applied to public and private sector enterprises. But reflecting on the poor quality music being produced at the moment made me realise that musicians caught in the pandemic are going through a period of expedience themselves. Great art, in other words, shouldn’t be expected to happen when society’s metaphorical roof is leaking. Rather it happens during the later ‘disillusionment’ phase. The place we now find ourselves:

The place where it’s been possible to reflect on the disaster, and then hopefully synthesise meaningful conclusions. Great art reveals universal truths. If the artist gets lucky, as well as seeing these truths, they get to describe a way forward through them. A way forward to better truths.

Which in turn means I’m supposed to be thankful that my favourite artists have largely stayed quiet since Covid-19 arrived. And that I’m supposed to be patient. Better truths need a critical mass of disillusionment and reflection time. No pressure.