El Perro del Mar ("The Sea Dog") is the nom de musique of Sarah Assbring, a Swedish pop thrush whose recordings are glorious aural confections that combine Brill Building pop and the influences of Brian Wilson, Burt Bacharach, and Smokey Robinson with lyrics that speak with a sweet, ineffable sadness of the pitfalls of love and life. According to Assbring, the name El Perro del Mar came to her during an ill-fated vacation in Spain; she was alone, depressed, and out of sorts when a stray dog came up to her while she sat on the beach, and the dog's efforts to bond with her inspired her to express her feelings through songwriting. Assbring began recording her new songs on her own, playing most of the instruments herself as well as singing, and in late 2006 Sweden's Hybris label issued her debut release, a three-song EP. The EP earned enthusiastic reviews and respectable sales, and Assbring's next project was a split single with Jens Lekman, released in North America by the prestigious indie label Secretly Canadian. A second EP, 2005's You Gotta Give to Get, was a hit in Sweden, thanks in part to a charming animated video for the title tune, and the disc helped spread the word about her music in England and the United States. Later that year, Hybris compiled El Perro del Mar's single sides and EPs into an album, Look! It's el Perro del Mar!; then, El Perro del Mar, a mostly reworked version of that first release, was issued in the U.K. by Memphis Industries in the fall of 2006, with an American version from The Control Group following shortly afterward. All of this was enough to get the singer signed to her fellow Swedes the Concretes' label, Licking Fingers, and she soon began working on new material. From the Valley to the Stars, her second full-length album of new material, arrived in early 2008. ~ Mark Deming, All Music GuideEl Perro del Mar is the musical work of Swedish songstress Sarah Assbring. Drawing influence from '60s girl-group music, church hymns, buddhist mantras, and twee pop, Assbring makes slow, sad, achingly beautiful pop-songs that favor simple repetition over overblown ostentation.http://www.artistdirect.com/artist/bio/el-perro-del-mar/3585528BackgroundAssbring (born in 1977) was raised in Gothenburg, and was exposed to music at an early age via the record collection of her jazz-loving father. From her childhood, Assbring wanted to "first and foremost" be a singer. "I remember being amazed by Annie Lennox and Kate Bush as a kid," Assbring has recalled, to Identity Theory. "I was totally into their way of going in and out of different personalities, almost as a form of acting when singing."Assbring abandoned early piano lessons because of their "restrictive" nature, and took to singing in a church choir throughout her adolescence and into early adulthood.In 2003, mired in depression and feeling like a victim of her own "destructive and negative" attitude, Assbring escaped on a holiday to Spain. On an isolated beach, she came across a dog, and via a strange process of self-identification —"I had had this feeling of feeling like a dog, all hopeless and tired," she told Pitchfork— she came to two conclusions: she had to start making music, and her name had to be El Perro del Mar (Spanish for "the Dog from the Sea").BeginningsWorking on her debut album, Assbring "was coming back from a very severe depression," and her early songs are steeped in sadness. On a song called, simply, "Sad," she sings: "I'm sad all day long/and at night I think about/being sad all day long.""It’s a lot about how I’d been feeling for a long time, and coming to terms with those feelings, and being kind to myself," Assbring told me, in 2005.Though she "wasn’t really thinking of ever having anybody else listening to [her] music," when recording, in 2004 her first release came out: a split single with friend Jens Lekman. Assbring made her debut, in Sweden, with 2005's Look! It's El Perro del Mar!. After following it up with the richly orchestral God Knows (You've Gotta Give to Get EP later that year, the two discs were combined into Assbring's international debut LP, El Perro del Mar.The album/s found Assbring "trying to combine two very not-related musical worlds: the ’60s girl-group things —be-bop-a-lu-la and ba-ba-ba-ba vocals; these happy-go-lucky things that you just sing— and [her] lyrics, which are just quite sad, expressing something completely opposite to that mindless happiness."For her second album, 2008's From the Valley to the Stars, Assbring flipped the script: the once-said lyrics were now repeating mantras of pure happiness (titles like "Happiness Won Me Over" and "Into the Sunshine" sung as incantations) over minimalist, incredibly sad-sound hymnals.Assbring called the record "a sonic journey to the sky, up above the clouds and back to earth again," and made it as a way of exploring "existential questions about life and death."It was followed by a split single, shared with Assbring's touring buddy Lykke Li, in which El Perro del Mar performed "At Your Best (You Are Love)" by Aaliyah.ChangingIn 2009, Assbring made a break from her previous work as El Perro del Mar, working with an outside collaborateur, Rasmus Hagg of Gothenburg acoustic-disco producers Studio, for the first time. "To be able to do something new I had to bring in someone else," Assbring admitted to me.Informed by a break-up prior to its making, the mini-album was called Love is Not Pop, a set which included a cover of Lou Reed's "Heavenly Arms.""There were so many things Rasmus taught me about pop; about making songs and producing," Assbring said. "It was a very personal, very fruitful situation to be in."http://altmusic.about.com/od/artists/a/elperrodelmar.htmGIF89a