EL PERRO DEL MAR - El Perro Del Mar Review

The rise of the iPod has partially changed the way users evaluate music, because now it's easier to find room in our lives for those ungainly albums with three great songs and a lot of filler, or with a lot of great songs that don't fit well together, or with songs that sound exhaustingly similar. The debut album by Swedish pop chanteuse Sarah Assbring—a.k.a. El Perro Del Mar—falls into that third category. El Perro Del Mar sports a stunning sound that combines the bewitching ethereality of Kate Bush and Cocteau Twins with the lipstick-and-spangle pop sense of Motown and the Brill Building, all draped in a deeply Scandinavian sorrow....full text Even though she's continuing Memphis Industries' winning streak, on her second release as El Perro del Mar ("the sea dog"), Sarah Assbring sounds so completely bummed out, so miserable in her own skin that even handclaps and tambourines sound like harbingers of doom. But she has so much to live for. For one thing, she makes all this mopeyness seem enticing instead of painfully self-absorbed, expressing her misery through musical elements typically associated with 1950s and 60s pop exuberance: girl-group harmonies, darting guitars, baby-doll vocals, a Gene Vincent lyric, references to parties and puppy dogs and candy and walking down hills....full text Anyone who yearned for the Concretes’ latest to err on the side of melancholy is directed to this beauty. Sarah Assbring of Gothenburg is El Perro: her songs are cyclical lullabies that tend not to sink in on first listen. Little appears to be happening. The titles — Party, Candy, Dog — are blunt and simplistic. Then the arrangements and subtle internal shifts steal inside your mind — by the third or fourth listen, you’re hooked. Backing vocals recorded at the bottom of a lift shaft, vibes and acoustic guitar add up to — whopping contradiction though it may be — a minimalist Phil Spector sound. Unique and magical....full text Seeing a dog on the beach is hardly the most inspiring of moments, but for Swedish Sarah Assbring it was the turning point in the birth of El Perro del Mar of whom she is the sole member. Boiling down the bones of the classic '60s pop gold of Phil Spector, Brill Building era, the youthful emotions of Goffin and King, filtered through minimal instrumentation and a yearning desperation that rubs against the upbeat moods of the babyboomer genre....full text