El Perro Del Mar - Love Is Not Pop Review
Posted by Jesse Coy on 10.20.2009
It’s some dreamy pop and love poetry coming to you direct from Sweden, as Sara Assbring’s third release reaches American shores.
El Perro Del Mar Love Is Not Pop Review
Licking Fingers
September 2009
* Gotta Get Smart
* Change Of Heart
* L Is For Love
* Let Me In
* Heavenly Arms
* It Is Something (To Have Wept)
* A Better Love
* L Is For Love (Low Motion Disco’s Additional Love Remix)
* Change Of Heart (J Rintamäki Remix)
* Let Me In (Nhessingtons Remix)
Last spring, NY Jimmy reviewed El Perro Del Mar’s second release, From the Valley to the Stars, in an Under 60-Second Review segment. So I had a chance to listen to that one, too. El Perro Del Mar, whose driving force and sole member is Sarah Assbring, returns with a third album. This was originally released in the spring of this year as an EP in Europe. It has reached North America and has as an add-on, superior remixes of three of the original seven songs.
The album quite literally starts off with the band breaking up with you. “Gotta Get Smart” is that little “talk” that most might not want to hear. It’s the girl dumping the guy. It leads into the slinky and smooth “Change of Heart.” Now the roles are reversed. It sounds like the narrator of the song is appealing to move forward with a relationship. Listening to the remix of this one, being one of the three songs getting remix treatment, I liked what I heard even more. It’s still a catchy, dreamy song, but more fleshed in.
I must also point out that were this an album from a male musician, I’d likely have little to no interest in it. Call me sexist, but normally I’m not so into male musicians talking of their relationship woes. Male vocalists, unless it’s highly intriguing, like Type O Negative’s early girl problems, those of the Violent Femmes, or maybe even what’s on via Pink Floyd’s The Wall, I tend to tune out.
Actually, even female vocalists who go the male-hating route annoy me to no end. Sarah has such a sweet voice, though. And these songs don’t go the male-hating route. Hopefully, that’s a trend that has been long since ditched by new and emerging female musicians.
Just to give you a sense of the bend of gender or the equally applicable nature of these tracks (it could be the guy giving the girl the pink slip in the first song), there’s one cover on this one, which is El Perro Del Mar’s take on Lou Reed’s “Heavenly Arms” (sadly, I was unable to track down the original for comparison), which ends with a spiraling refrain.
heavenly arms reach out to hold me…
Sylvia, you mean so much to me…
This was a dedication to Lou Reed’s wife at the time. I didn’t recognize this as a Lou Reed cover upon first hearing it, being unfamiliar with the original. My first reaction? Ah, come on, Sarah! You’re keeping this sort of anonymous up until now, but now you’re dedicating a song to your boyfriend? Why? But then I became informed. This was Lou’s wife. I see. Why did I think Sylvia was a guy’s name anyway? Of course, had I pegged it as a woman’s name, without identifying it as a Lou Reed cover, I might’ve thought… wow, a song to her girlfriend?
My point is… oops, lost it.
Anyway, my favorite track on Love Is Not Pop might very well be the remix of “L Is for Love,” the original track fine enough, but sounding just a bit too… well, pop for me. The remix clocks in at other eight minutes and is labeled as a low motion disco remix. Okay, I’ll roll with that. There are a lot of nightly sounds, samples of kids’ voices roaming about, chains rattling, occasional tribal drumming, and other such subtly echoing effects that give it just a slightly gothic undertone. Speaking of the remixes, the remix of “Let Me In” (once more, a fine enough song in its original form) is transformed from spacey, keyboard drifting to a bit of an acoustic pop rocker, some nice guitar strumming and drumming that carries the song.
The original EP (before the three remixes kick in) closes out with “A Better Love,” with the nice line, this isn’t over until I say when…, which is just an interesting bit of phrasing to put on a last track. It’s another parting song, the narrator telling this unseen individual that he or she deserve a better love than what the narrator can give. This album feels a bit more serious than El Perro Del Mar’s last release, or perhaps the songs are structured more as conventional songs. It paints a nice picture of the potential of the band.
The 411: Good for a dreamy mood. This one walks a nice fine line between sweet and bitter sweet.
