El Perro Del Mar
From the Valley to the Stars
The Control Group
By Hiro Kinuta
A rainy day; the droplets are streaking down my window, and I have a cup of peppermint tea with the unabridged version of “Les Miserables”, which my roommate had guaranteed would change my life. Artsy fartsy, I know (I was even wearing all black like a beat poet), but honestly, there wasn’t a more perfect time and place to listen to El Perro Del Mar.
I don’t know how depressing Sweden can be, but Scandinavian sensation, Sarah Assbring’s one-(wo)man project conveys some serious emotional baggage. Her newest release, From the Valley to the Stars, is like a thin sheet of clear, unscathed ice covering a frigid lake. Fragile and cold, taking one unsteady step would plunge you into an unpleasantly chilly experience. Nonetheless, it’s a pretty sight. Reminiscent of Elizabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins, Assbring’s vocals are nothing short of haunting, and her melancholic lyrics are quickly obscured by her tender harmonies. Her knack seems to be repetition, and abrupt endings. Assbring creates a sense of motion without really going anywhere, a sort of musical ambling where the wanderer is suddenly shot to a halt. I’m sure that most of us can attest to the fact that this can be extremely tedious and tiresome to the ear, but Assbring (arguably) seems to slip past and get away with it. The record ends without the listener realizing that 16 tracks have gone by.
It’s easy to veil bad singing with massive amounts of reverb and overdubbing a lot of vocal tracks, but it’s nice to hear that El Perro Del Mar has nothing to hide; her vocals are piercingly clear and genuine. Then again, the vocals are definitely the driving force of her music and thus to expect less from such a project would be a waste of time and a record.
Final word: pick up a book and listen to this record as background music. I can’t see myself listening to this for the sake of listening to a record.
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