El Perro Del Mar - El Perro Del Mar

El Perro Del Mar

El Perro Del Mar
Control Group Records.

SCQ Rating: 80%

Few record store experiences have been as great as the Approach-the-Employee, Point-toward-the-Ceiling moment where you ask “What’s playing right now?”. It happened with You Are Free, it even happened this year with Kyte, but possibly best of all was when I first heard El Perro Del Mar. Many of the details were circumstantial, looking back, and not solely involved with the disc itself; on Tuesday mornings, I would finish my midnight-shift week, and although I’d be exhausted, I usually stayed up through the blues of Hamilton’s winter mornings and grabbed the first bus downtown to shop for a record. This particular dawn saw snowflakes the size of golf-balls slowly drifting towards concrete, which to the sound of Sarah Assbring’s delicate coos through store speakers, created the ideal atmosphere for insomniac-shopping.

Opening with the bass-heavy drum beats of a jukebox swansong, ‘Candy’ opens our hearts to Assbring’s melancholy – an element to this record as tangible as the instruments themselves – that draws us close like a best friend. Whether she’s going out for candy or, as in ‘Party’, inviting someone over to her shindig, one can’t help but call her bluff; ‘Party’ is such a depressing invitation, her intonation alone informs listeners that she’s likely by herself. Apparently loneliness isn’t new to pop records, so what carves El Perro Del Mar her own niche is the arrangements, which take inspiration from Golden Age soul and doo-wap girl-groups.

If these tunes sound like nothing more than a pity party, they’re counterbalanced by a few upbeat numbers, hand-claps and vocal harmonies galore. ‘I Can’t Talk About It’ is an exercise in denial, where one prays that keeping quiet on an issue will make it disappear, that’s punctuated by shiny piano chords and Phil Spector-esque production. ‘It’s All Good’, by far the most carefree track here, presents us with the possibility that all her pain is in the rearview mirror with a catchy melody. Well, it isn’t, and as one of her mirror-epiphanies goes: “This loneliness ain’t pretty no more”.

Girl has a point, and El Perro Del Mar reflects the sharp truth that depression has several phases; sometimes it’s a comfort, sometimes it’s loathsome, and as such, her debut either pulls us close or, as ‘This Loneliness’ indicates, pushes us away. Still, with winter a few degrees off, El Perro Del Mar is wonderful company for a quiet night spent watching the world from inside.