Sůl

No scenery, but situations. Poignant songs, which you have to listen to or turn off. The new album by Budoár staré dámy is called Sůl (i.e. Salt) and was created slowly, as it happens when babies are born in the band and houses are being built. The group came out of a boiler room in Brno in 1998, and has undergone a few changes but the alternative rock keeps its pace with them throughout their entire existence. Unpracticed performances, yelling, normal clothes… suitable for all ages as a personal discovery.

The album was recorded in the summer and autumn of 2016 in Brno, in the Indies studio with Broněk Šmid. The author, singer and guitarist, Marta Kovářová describes its birth: “The songs can’t be created - when I’m at home alone with a guitar. There’ll always be someone at home! I’m not Svobodová anymore and I have two kids. I write songs quietly, in my head, on my way to the train station, when breastfeeding, before they wake up and go straight back to sleep. The scene is not Brno but a village in a frozen valley. And where are my fruitful anxieties? Lost in joy. So be grateful - they tell me. But you don’t write about it. So I’d rather sing a recipe for chicken. And salt much less. So I have some of it left.”

The lyrics reveal a larger perspective and insight. They are not so much drowned in tears, observing more about himself than to himself. Apart from Marta’s own lyrics, we can find on the record also texts of the poet, Karel Šiktanec, Lubor Kasal, and artist Paul Klee set to music and two recipes for strange meals. Even the music is, in comparison to the previous two albums, less melancholy, more playful. As if Budoár has been aired and at the same time hasn’t left its original homemade recipe. The salted material was mixed by Ondřej Ježek and battered by Marta Kovářová.

Budoár staré dámy, three out of five being females, used to break men’s hearts for 10 years touring around Europe. They are now playing as a 4-piece with one woman only -  better to fill the souls of women!