El Perro del Mar Issue #36

The Swede known for playing her own instruments takes a conductor role and gets mystical on new album

By Tara Murtha
Published: June 1st, 2008 | 4:07pm

“I was traveling on a very bumpy and steep road just upwards and upwards for hours and hours,” begins Sarah Assbring, the singular force behind Swedish musical project El Perro del Mar.

Though Assbring’s talking about riding a bus through the foothills of Southern India, she could just as easily be describing her new record, From the Valley to the Stars (The Control Group). Some of the album’s songs, such as “You Can’t Steal a Gift,” swell and spiral up to cathedral-high ceilings before nose-diving back to Earth or, more precisely, coastal USA in the ’60s. Swishy doo-wop rhythms swing with enough vintage teenage boardwalk crush to keep the Brian Wilson and Phil Spector references coming.

A concept album rather than a batch of hopeful singles, the highs and lows are bridged by tracks stretching calm as a reflection-glazed lake. Pipe organ, church choir harmonies, and chanted mantras — think Air’s “Kelly Watch the Stars” gone ecclesiastical — form the spine of the album. Is elegiac pop an oxymoron?

“I was very into existential kinds of questions and thoughts that I really needed to sort out,” Assbring says. The thing is, to go deep inside, sometimes you’ve got to branch way out.

Assbring has a rep for fiercely protecting her artistic independence: she produces her own albums, teaches herself instruments, and records her music in her Gothenburg home studio. Though she collaborates on several projects — such as contributing vocals to Jens Lekman’s Night Falls Over Kortedala — the new El Perro album is the first time Assbring invited other artists to play in her world (Assbring played every instrument on her eponymous debut).

Assbring is indebted to guitarist and bassist Jesper Jarold and drummer Nils Tornqvist for their contributions, while members of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra laid down oboe, double bass, and horn tracks. Friends Kristin Lidell and Bjorn Synneby donated trumpet and sitar. To help translate the sound to stage, Assbring assembled a bassist, organist, pianist, and drummer.

Despite loosening up boundaries, it’s still Assbring’s show. “I think I was even more controlling on this album than maybe I was on the first,” she laughs. “I was very set on what I wanted to do and what I wanted the musicians to play. I was more like the conductor of it all rather than the one-man band.”

The trip to India wasn’t random. Besides desperately needing a break after a grueling six months in the studio, thoughts of India — with its temples and the sense of worship that permeated daily life — paralleled meditations on heaven that drives the album.

What she remembers most about India was the rickety ride up the mountain on a bus the locals rode daily. “I thought I was going to die like every half hour,” she says. Then the exhilaration of ascension took over. “It was this totally amazing and overwhelming landscape. It took six hours and taught me so much about enduring — and enjoying.”