El Perro Del Mar, which is Spanish for 'dog of the sea'. It is also the name of Swedish Sarah Assbring's one-man project. The name of the band has a nice history: Sarah was on holiday in Spain, where she sat on the beach musing about her lack of musical inspiration. But then, suddenly, out of nowhere, there was a dog. Sarah continued to see the dog all week, and back in Gothenburg she felt much
… better. The inspiration was there again, and the result is her first self-titled CD. El Perro Del Mar sounds old-fashioned, the main reference being girl pop as it emerged from the pens of the Brill Building-based songwriting duo Carole King and Gerry Goffin. Especially the many oeh-oeh-oeh and shoe-bi-doo-waa choirs look old-fashioned. Yet El Perro Del Mar is also modern, because it didn't sound that lo-fi and stripped down in the sixties. And the melancholic veil that covers the songs has little to do with times of carelessness and teenage love. This contradiction and the alienating effect mean that El Perro Del Mar may need several listens, but then you have heard a special CD. (IV)more
