El Perro Del Mar "How Did We Forget"/ "Somebody’s Baby"
Laying breathy baby-doll coos over beauteous girl group arrangements, El Perro Del Mar (in actuality, Swede singer Sarah Assbring) offers a sweet and dreamy alternative to all the numerous retro-embracing pop-soul vamps swarming about these days. Listening to her lulls you to this ethereal place that could easily be considered the aural equivalent of heaven; that is, if her voice and, at times, lyrics weren’t drowned in so much sorrow.
Such a melancholic hell was masterfully configured on her wintertime pleaser, “How Did We Forget?”, a molasses-flowing tune that found Perro repeating lines like “It’s easy babe, It’s easy babe/ To make it hard” like some heartached loony while the band behind her laboriously clung to this circuitous doo-woppy rhythm, the occasional blasting of horns popping up to add some zing to the instrumental’s sleepy slow jam churn.
It might have left you near-comatose, but the record was compelling nonetheless, it’s few elements at hand capturing the depressing haze of a once-lively romance that had somehow steered into auto-pilot.
With the arrival of the album that “How Did We Forget” teased, From The Valley To The Stars, we are supplied with even more malt-shoppe-era confections mired in misery. One of the best is the non-Jackson Browne cover “Somebody’s Baby”, a jovial jaunt that could totally soundtrack the giggly peaks of young passion. But a deeper listen to the songwriting, revolving around a commitment-phobic woman (“You was somebody’s baby/ But you went back into the sky/ Want somebody’s daddy but/ You kissed them all goodbye”), and Perro’s cheerful vocal suddenly feels weighted with a somber tone, quickly deteriorating the surface notion that this is an effervescent puppy love entry.
Her allegiance to dreary subtexts may get you down, but El Perro Del Mar’s knack for draping her sadness with ear candy simplicity keeps her music too good to ignore. Pencil her in as the latest in a long list of Swedes who do pop the best.
DL: “How Did We Forget” (YFH)
DL: “Somebody’s Baby” (YFH)
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