El Perro del Mar (self-titled)
Well, here’s a Swedish girl with a Spanish pseudonym (meaning “dog of the sea,” I’m told, or maybe just “sea dog”) singing in English in a distinctly American style. One track from this album, “God Knows,” was offered as a free track on eMusic, and on the strength of that, and a good review, I downloaded the whole album.
It’s a pretty slight affair, ten songs in thirty-three minutes, and most of the songs themselves are slight to a fault. El Perro is a good, rather mournful singer, and there’s a lot of potential here, but although the songs are tuneful and very nicely arranged most of them are too simple and repetitive to maintain my interest. Musical repetition is ok in pop music, up to a point, lyrical repetition less so for me. Many of these songs have both, with the result that at an average of three minutes each, some of them still seem to go on too long. Here, for instance, is the complete lyric for “Dog”, as best I can make it out:
All the feeling you got for me
Is that for a dog
Oh what a feeling
Oh what a feeling for a dog
The album has a saving grace, though, in the vocal arrangements. I’m not sure who first had the idea of giving a minor, melancholy, nostalgic twist to “shoobeedoowop.” “sha-la-la,” and other nonsense vocalizations of ‘50s and early ‘60s girl-group pop. The first time I remember hearing it was in the chorus of Eurhythmics’ “Here Comes the Rain Again.” The masterpiece of this bent-nostalgia sound, at least as far as I know, is Julee Cruise’s Floating Into the Night, one of my very favorite albums, although there it’s done more with instruments than with vocals. El Perro del Mar gets into that territory often enough on this album that anyone who’s susceptible to its appeal will find something to like in it.
Here’s the album, with samples. She also has a new album, From the Valley to the Stars, which certainly looks interesting (read the review), but I haven’t sampled it yet. And here’s the artist’s web site.
Pre-TypePad
Light On Dark Water 
Leave a comment