folk holidays

BRATŘI EBENOVÉ RETURN WITH A NEW ALBUM AND GOOD OLD VIGOUR

BRATŘI EBENOVÉ AND THEIR AFFECTIONATE AND INSIGHTFUL HUMOUR

Already over forty years on the scene, the brotherly trio never ceases to entice with fresh and innovative folk-rock songs about how we live here. And yet, as they sing on their new album What We Know, they look at the world as it marches on and, most importantly, want to keep all five of them together.

Accompanied by brothers David and Kryštof and great rock and jazz musicians, the almost exclusive lyricist and music writer Marek glosses the present with a will and a conviction that decency is not to be discarded, but a lot of people still don't take it into account. The Ebens' polite banter, the proverbial conspiratorial humour, but also the scepticism about where we've got to in such a divided age today, coalesces into the multi-syllabic question, "Where is it all going?".

The Eben brothers' tasteful, affectionate humour goes hand in hand with very good and stylistically varied music that doesn't need to chase trends, yet sounds fresh, sparkling and instrumentally up to scratch. At most we said we wanted to play something like reggae, and it usually didn't turn out that way anyway. Which is maybe just our style," Marek Eben revealed the charm of the unwantedness of their songs in an interview for deník.cz.

The album Co my víme? (What We Know) was released last September after nine long years, and knowing all that has happened in that time, it's a wonder that they haven't resorted to a much more pithy vocabulary, but that has never been their thing, and they still manage to express the embarrassment of the present with enviable grace, even if it sometimes makes you shudder.

Photo: Kamila Berndorffová