El Perro Del Mar: Live at the Bowery Ballroom (3/1/2007)

admin — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 02:21:00 +0000

New York, New York

Some musicians are primarily recording artists, and others excel when they play live. Because El Perro Del Mar (Swedish singer-songwriter Sarah Assbring) plays quiet, repetitive, melancholy pop songs that are great to listen to when you’re reading or half asleep, I had her pegged as belonging to the former category. However, her recent headlining performance at the Bowery Ballroom in NYC left me pleasantly surprised to find that she has found a way to make her music thrive in a live setting.

Backed by a three-piece band of men with long hair and sharp suits, Assbring sang and strummed her guitar forcefully, rocking her shoulders back and forth with confidence. While her recordings bring to mind a lonely 1960s woman sitting at a window and gazing out at the rain, her live set was peppered with electric guitar riffs and imbued with restrained but palpable energy and a sense of resolve. It was almost as if she were a new version of the woman singing on the record – a strong, modern woman looking back and sharing her stories of harder times that were now behind her.

Written by: Kiri Oliver, March 26th 2007

El Perro del Mar

admin — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 13:33:00 +0000

By El Perro del Mar

The Control Group

Listening to El Perro del Mar – a pseudonym for the Swedish singer Sarah Assbring – makes me feel like I should be a character in an early 1960s television show. The chipper, pop melodies, be-bops and sha-la-las that underscore her melancholy lyrics about life and love have earned her comparisons to the Beach Boys and girl groups from the 50s and 60s. Like those groups, she’s also a big fan of repetition, as in the song “God Knows (You Gotta Give to Get)”:

God knows
I've been taking a lot without giving back
God knows
I've been taking a lot without giving back

You gotta give to get
You gotta give to get back
You gotta give to get
You gotta give to get back
You gotta give to get
You gotta give to get back to the love

Seems boring. It’s not. And don’t all of our obsessive thoughts tend to loop through our heads in quite the same way?

Yes, you’ll find yourself bopping your head to the left and the right when you slip this CD into your player, but unlike the Shirelles’ voices that sound as if they’ve gotten a good night’s sleep and sipped plenty of chamomile tea, Assbring’s is that of a woman who has been up all night weeping and throwing back glögg. Assbring probably has a perfect voice underneath it all, but she’s just too tired and hurt to give a shit. The Shirelles give you cotton candy, Assbring gives you burnt sugar.

Written by: Margaux Laskey, January 18th 2007