El Perro Del Mar El Perro Del Mar by: Tom Hall Fri:02-Feb-07 Label: Memphis Industries Year: 2006 WB rating 79 out of 100

There exists within American folk tradition a phenomenon which has been termed the “legacy of blackface minstrelsy”, an artificial authenticity that lies at the core of American – and by association, all other forms of – popular music. Associating with the depth and intensity of Black history – a history of tragedy and triumph – enables an artist to mine a rich vein of passion and tragedy which has yielded much ore. Elvis shimmied with the eroticism and vivacity of a Southern slave population that refused to lay still; Bob Dylan repeatedly sang in the voice of a wise old Negro, composing songs to the specifications of chain-gang call-and-response blues; Eric Clapton inserted himself into Robert Johnson’s recollections of spiritual annihilation, reminiscing on the choices one must make to selfishly pursue personal gain. The blues became shorthand for the vast collective pain and suffering of an entire race. On El Perro Del Mar, Swedish singer/songwriter Sarah Assbring shows us that not only is such an association extremely affective, it can also be original, honest and intensely personal.

This album is, firstly, unique. The most immediate challenge for the listener is to resist the type of lazy categorizations which almost instantaneously disgorge their corrosive influence on the fragile membranes of our collective tongues: references to the doo-wop of the early 60s, “shimmering pop”, and sweetness, simply do not suffice. There is something far more intriguing than sweetness and contrast happening here.

El Perro’s stunning gift of depicting the delicate interplay between misery and elation is witnessed from the very first moments of the album. Lone, deep drum beats sound out in the first four bars of album opener ‘Candy’, and a tone of relentless engagement is being set. As she sings sweetly and sadly: “I’m going out to buy me some candy” we get the sense El Perro is both baring herself open, and hiding from our stinging judgment at the same time. The ambivalent tone, darkly playful lyrical content and intensely poppy structuring of the songs create a sense of deep tragedy, endured in silence – a mood which washes softly and satisfyingly over the listener, eliciting an almost overwhelming feeling of tenderness. By choosing to express herself in such a familiar tone and format, she manages to fix our gaze on the beauty and grace with which she conveys a stunning sense of emotiveness and dryness. This technique pulls us deeper within the otherworldliness of El Perro Del Mar, to a place which proves to be equal parts accessible and elusive.

The ability of El Perro to convey such a complicated and contradictory sense of what it is to be lonely relies heavily on the excellent employment and corruption of a call-and-response pattern of repeated phrases, open ended questions and unresolved musings. The success of such an approach is no more evident than on the track ‘I Can’t Talk About It’. Here, two simple phrases are repeated, over and over, throughout the entire song. El Perro sings: “Lately, there’s been a lot going on” and “I’ve made a life on my own”, both of which are chorused with “I can’t really talk about it”, a deceptively sinister line which, when sung with such incredible ambivalence, becomes genuinely unsettling. By choosing to be the lone responding voice to her own simple observations, El Perro ensures that her songs remain entirely one-sided. Where these lines would traditionally be met with a response which gives the listener the impression of empathy and understanding, the absence of such a response gives El Perro the appearance of having been left ever more isolated and alone. She is abandoned even by the blues themselves, left with only the hauntingly repetitive “ba-dup-de-das”, menacing “la-las” and harmonised “doo-dos” to provide comfort. The resulting sense of detachment pervades the very basis of the songs, and as a result the metaphorical blanket of the blues is torn off to expose icy shoulders to the unforgiving Scandinavian winds. Curiously, such abandonment serves only to humanise her in a way that we feel culpable, as humans, for the very existence of emotion, for the persistence of pain and empathetically responsible for such expressions of abandonment.

In trying to express pure emotion – rather than explain it – the emotion becomes what cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard calls ‘hyperreal’, a simulation of itself which, rather than being simple imitation, becomes the truest representation of the sentiment in question. El Perro is effectively allowing us to hear expressions of hopelessness and abandonment as if for the first time, and as such, claims them as her own. Rarely can a songwriter create such a unique and perplexing atmosphere within their songs, and here it is done with such impressive precision that one is forced into such obscure referencing as this.

Put simply, this is an album of incredible beauty and profound honesty – so much so that it can in parts feel like a pastiche of itself. El Perro Del Mar leaves the listener with a sense of privilege. That privilege: the experience of hearing a songwriter who fully conveys the very human feelings of isolation melancholy and for this we should be truly thankful.