Even though she's continuing Memphis Industries' winning streak, on her second release as El Perro del Mar ("the sea dog"), Sarah Assbring sounds so completely bummed out, so miserable in her own skin that even handclaps and tambourines sound like harbingers of doom. But she has so much to live for. For one thing, she makes all this mopeyness seem enticing instead of painfully self-absorbed, expressing her misery through musical elements typically associated with 1950s and 60s pop exuberance: girl-group harmonies, darting guitars, baby-doll vocals, a Gene Vincent lyric, references to parties and puppy dogs and candy and walking down hills. Even the name she gives her hurt-- "the blues"-- seems old-fashioned, a reminder of an archaic time before mood disorders were given their own names and medications.
It's never exactly clear what the cause of El Perro's blues is, but the album charts a narrative of recovery from some emotionally devastating event-- presumably being dumped. After the lonely drumbeats that begin "Candy", which act both as sad heartbeats and an appropriately desolate overture, she runs through the range of reactions. She tries a little self-affirmation on "God Knows (You Gotta Give to Get)", a rustling reworking of girl-group sounds that's also the album's strongest tune. On "Party", she presumably dials up her ex and tries to hook up again, and her attempts to sound happy are knowingly pathetic. Next comes anger: On "Dog", she sings accusingly, "All the feelings you have for me, just like for a dog." That she sounds so angelic and steady makes the realization all the more affecting.
These songs are so intent and intense in their misery that it's almost a little funny-- tragedy amplified into comedy. Anyone who sings "Come on over, baby, there's a party going on" as if she's reading from a suicide note risks melodrama and maybe even hysteria. But El Perro's a careful singer whose near-tears delivery can imbue downhearted hyperbole with subtle emotional inflections that sound achingly genuine. And her appropriation of traditionally upbeat pop sounds for miserable ends doesn't deaden their powers-- they've always been used to express heartbreak and confusion-- but instead gives them surprising strength as they both assuage her pain and salt her wounds. "This loneliness ain't pretty no more," she sings on "This Loneliness", acknowledging the melancholic draw of pop music in general and her music specifically. It's as if she's trying to diffuse any romanticized empathy listeners might develop after prolonged exposure to these songs. She doesn't want to pass her blues along to anyone else.
The pairing of "This Loneliness" and "Coming Down the Hill" creates a turning point on the album, the moments when El Perro decides to get over it, to move on with her life. Those songs lead directly into "It's All Good", with its ecstatic la-la-la's and ooh-ooh-ooh's. "It's all good. Take a new road and never look back," she sings triumphantly. The clouds have parted, the sun is shining, the handclaps can finally sound happy.
But the apparent happiness is short lived. In a devastating twist ending, the final song on El Perro del Mar, a cover of Brenda Lee's "Here Comes That Feeling", makes clear that the singer's deadening sense of loss, which she has fought so hard to overcome, has been replaced with a numbing emptiness equally vast and burdensome. It's a hole in her heart that can't be filled by the cheery saxophone, doo-wop piano, or even Sam Cooke's "Feel It (Don't Fight It)", which she masochistically weaves into the outro. The joke's on her, but it's not very funny.
