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- Date Released: January 1, 2006
- Genre: Alternative/Punk
- Style: Singer-Songwriter, Indie Pop
- Label: Memphis Industries
Party music for a party of one.
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We Say...
The seventh song on the second record from El Perro Del Mar is called "Coming Down the Hill," and thinking of the album as Kate Bush in reverse is not a bad place to start. El Perro has all of Bush's faerie-like ethereality, but in place of her theatrical flourishes are downbeat moans, excruciating self-doubt and backing vocals that sound like they're being supplied by a doped-up girl group.
Sarah Assbring — El Perro Del Mar's one and only member — is a willful naïf with a waifish soprano and a childlike cadence; if that combination is occasionally a bit precious, the album's desperate melancholy more than makes up for it. "Party" is desolate as a beach at midnight, just a dry strum and ghostlike backing vocals. "I Can’t Talk About It" is aching and eerie, a scratched-up Motown 45 playing on the wrong speed in an empty house at 3:00 in the morning. Assbring's motifs run counter to her sentiment: she re-works the sock-hop sound until it's dewy and hopeless, party music for a party of one. Though the record is purportedly inspired by actual events, it's better to think of Assbring's sadness as a conceit rather than a testimonial. No matter how sincere, the refrain, "This loneliness ain't pretty no more," gets hard to take when it's repeated upwards of five times.
The record comes into its own on "God Knows (You Gotta Get to Give)" a swaying shoop-shoop song where Assbring intones Julee Cruise-like: "God knows I've been taking a lot without giving back." El Perro Del Mar doesn't completely reverse that equation — Assbring demands an awful lot over its 30 minutes — but it does wrest some fragile, tender songs from her life of want. -
They Say...
With a voice that wavers between Jane Birkin's and Neil Young's, Swede Sarah Assbring, or El Perro del Mar as she calls herself, writes of hope and loneliness, sometimes at the same time. Cleary influenced by Burt Bacharach and Phil Spector, El Perro del Mar sings a kind of indie doo wop, bringing together syllabic backing harmonies ("sha-la-la-la," "shooby doo-wop bah," and "be-bop a loo-lah" are some of the phrases she uses throughout the album), poppy melodies, simple vocal lines, acoustic guitars, and twinkling pianos on her self-titled full-length. But despite these brighter, happier elements that envelop her music, Assbring has a kind of despair in her voice that veils even the most cheerful of her songs in sadness. "It's All Good," in which she echoes variations of "it's all good, take a new road and never look back" throughout the entire piece, even in its optimism, conveys the sense that at one point things in fact were not good at all, even though they might be changing, and the breezy warmth of "God Knows (You Gotta Give to Get)" is more of a criticism of herself for "taking a lot without giving back" than advice regarding the benefits of altruism. More frequently, she doesn't even try to hide her melancholy in horns and major chords. "Party" is utterly depressing, as Assbring sings with hurt heavy in her voice, weighing it down so that she can hardly get her words out ("I don't want to stay at home/I just want to be a part of it") as her guitar drones on forlornly, and "This Loneliness," as the title implies, explores her own miserable solitude ("This loneliness ain't pretty no more/Loneliness, only taking a place of a friend"). The songs on El Perro del Mar hardly contain more than a few lines that are then repeated again and again, but this simplicity only adds to their poignancy, and how intimate and real they feel, and makes the album utterly impossible to ignore.
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| 01. |  |
Candy |
3:24 |
|
| 02. | |
God Knows (You Gotta Give to Get) |
3:41 |
|
| 03. | |
Party |
3:14 |
|
| 04. | |
People |
3:20 |
|
| 05. | |
Dog |
3:03 |
|
| 06. | |
I Can't Talk About It |
2:54 |
|
| 07. | |
Coming Down the Hill |
2:34 |
|
| 08. | |
This Loneliness |
4:39 |
|
| 09. | |
It's All Good |
3:03 |
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| 10. | |
Here Comes That Feeling |
3:21 |
|
10 Total Tracks, 33:13 Total Length
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Credits
- Karl Magnússon - Design // Filip Wilén - Management // Philip Granqvist - Producer // Philip Granqvist - Engineer // Philip Granqvist - Mastering // Philip Granqvist - Mixing // Johanna Hedborg - Photography
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