Budoár staré dámy used to be a Brno-based band with a mostly female line-up. Both of these things have changed over the years. These days, the charismatic band-leader and singer Marta Kovářová (neé Svobodová) is currently accompanied by three men. And although part of the band still lives in the South Moravian capital, Marta herself got married and now lives in a “village in a cold gorge”. Her new role of married woman and housewife is projected into several songs “about cooking”. Life in the inhospitable countryside might be connected with the choice of Lubor Kasala’s poem Z ježatých hor (From the Spiky Mountains) (“Mrazem to mrská a zimu pase” – “The whip of frost herds the winter”), the musical version of which the band used at the very start of their new album. It was a good move, because it is an energetic song with a very specific and colourful text (“…kde jektají mývalové umývadel a syčí hadi sprch” – “… where chattering raccoons was in basins and hissing snakes shower”). The dynamics, rhythm and track timing is masterful. The band, despite the fact that these days they no longer have a chance to rehearse together as much as they used to, presents itself in top form – energetic, aggressive, but through all the chaos still organised. There is not a single surplus note to be heard.
The energy continues to flow through every single one of the twelve songs on the album. This however doesn’t mean that the band holds a single pace for almost forty minutes. In “Čaj z makovic (Poppy Tea)” and “Kopřivy (Stinging nettles)”, we see a slowdown, but for the overall sound of the album, moves and changes within the separate songs are more important. For example, the song “Jeptiška (Nun)” uses pace changes (together with narrative lyrics) and a vaguely “Tibetan” drum sound to achieve suspense. One of the most striking songs in the album is the miniature “Kuře ve sněhových šatech (Chicken in a snowy dress)”, which is similar to one of the several musical faces of the American singer Beck. If Budoár staré dámy used to be a young lady with accompaniment, then it certainly isn’t today. With Marta Kovářová, the band is made up of three significant musicians – the guitar effects of Marek Laudát, the varied and dynamic drums of Ladislav Šiška and the strong double bass of Tomáš Ergens (for example on the song “Jakoty”) together form a compact whole.
What maybe was the most complicated was connecting the seemingly disparate texts, some written by Kovářová herself, others taken from poets, famous (for example “Bagr (Earth Mover)” by Šiktanec) and anonymous (“Šimon – poet of the street”). Not all, however, worked out equally well. The translation of a Chinese poem about a Buddhist nun goes against contemporary Czech language rules, but in the end, even these songs have their magic – similar to when several Czech bands successfully used the poetry of Antonín Sova.
The texts on the album do not have a unifying topic - recipes for chicken or nettle soup are a long shot from the angry “I won’t open up to anybody, I don’t want you to see inside” in the song “Případ (Case)”. But what connects the individual songs is the brilliant work with slogans or the novel playing with words, for example the song “Vláčile!” (by the way, probably the first song to use the word Zyrtec, the name of a medicine). And why Sůl (Salt)? Marta Kovářová says that she no longer uses as much salt as she used to, and so there is some left. However, salt is needed in a roast chicken or to grit a road in the spiky mountains. In the end, we might have just found the connections between the individual songs.
Budoár staré dámy – Sůl, publisher: Indies Scope 2017. 12 songs, total playing time: 38:38
No comment added yet..