El Perro Del Mar - From The Valley To The Stars

The second album by Sarah Assbring’s one-woman-band ‘El Perro Del Mar’ is in the continuity of her first self-titled record: a few lines sang by this ethereal voice, repeated ad infinitum, in an intimate manner. Only the background changes a little: while the guitar was still very present in her previous work, Assbring here is entirely alone with her keyboards. An artist raised in the iPod age, she samples herself so as to be both the lead vocals and the choir. She confirms that, beyond the apparent ease and prettiness of her songs, she faces the dizziness of the digital era; her peaceful music is in fact a restless superimposition and transformation of patterns. Each musical score, made of a few notes in one timbre, is treated like a pictorial design, confronted with others thrown on the canvas. It does not sound like electro, but it follows exactly the electro philosophy.

‘Jubilee’, the opening track, is a good example of this kind of structure. Layers of sound are added progressively, slowly, while the lyrics focus on one felicitous play on ‘jubilee’ and ‘jubilation’. This beginning also announces the religious, or, let’s say, sacred character of Assbring’s music. As in her previous album, God is present in the topics of her song, though it is never clear whether her faith is sincere or partakes to a distanciation effect. It is obvious, nevertheless, that she is fascinated by the sound of organ (which she reproduces with her electronic one). ‘Glory to the World’ (whose title has biblical undertones but also, maybe, a materialistic meaning which would make it terribly ironic) is for instance based on a baroque counterpoint at the organ, turned into an electronic fugue. ‘Do Not Despair’ is even more telling: the false weakness of the voice is transformed into a great strength thanks to the dogged repetition of the main line; and when the brass come into play, it is a sudden burst of holy light and joy that is here translated. Another sacred influence is that of the negro spirituals, like in ‘Into the Sunshine’: a delightful blues with rythmic response from a choir.

In some tracks, Assbring juggles patterns and syntax as if it were a demolition venture, but also a reconstruction, of language, of music. ‘The Sun Is An Old Friend’ plays with this one sentence, singing it as ‘is an old friend the sun’, making the most of all the poetic possibilities of these few words, the same as she makes the most of the structural possibilities of a few notes. This track, very short, seems to exist only for the pleasure of trying, tasting a field of opportunities.

Sometimes it sounds just like nicely melancholic melodies, meaningless ritornellos, a bit retro, even kitschy, reminding of Sébastien Tellier’s latest material. The instrumental ‘Inside The Golden Egg’ is a mere romantic piece, pleasant and sad. But in every track, the discreet insistence on an inside vertigo, created by the slow spiral of neverending musical phrases, proves that El Perro Del Mar is a truly modern artist, in quest of a new spirituality.