... but she'd rather be singing back up for Aretha Franklin.



A name like "The Dog of the Sea" (when translated from Spanish to English) might seem unfitting for the frail, soft-spoken Swedish songstress Sarah Assbring, yet when you hear her explain it, with such an organic eloquence and charm, you can't help but understand – or at least, desire to understand – where she is coming from.

During a crucial time in her life, when she had stopped writing and had stopped being creative, Sarah was able to escape to Spain for a retreat. It was there that a coincidental encounter with a dog on the beach changed everything: "[Seeing that dog] made me kind of realize a lot of things that I had forgotten, I think, along the way ... and sparked into all kinds of different important insights in my life. Shortly after that, I started writing again. I started writing in a different kind of way – with hope, with perspective and with freedom also." And thus, El Perro del Mar was born.

Lucky for us, because the latest release from the artist, From the Valley to the Stars, plays like a rejuvenating dip in the sea – sharp and instantly chilling, but perfectly soothing once you've warmed up to being completely immersed. "It kind of started with the very basic idea of man's relationship to nature and the feeling of having lost something along the way. Something that is naturally within us when we are kids that we lose when we grow up, and we always have a sense of having lost something – not necessarily the loss of an innocence, but a loss of something natural, something unspoken," she explained.

When asked if the name El Perro del Mar was an alter ego, she maintained, "It's just the music that I do ... It's my musical self, and it goes under the name El Perro del Mar. But I wouldn't want to draw any difference between Sarah and me and El Perro del Mar. It's the same."

Rather than simply letting music be her inspiration, El Perro del Mar turned to nature and literature in order to carry out the idea for her conceptual album. "On this album, the songs were more or less like chapters, as if you were to write a book or a novel. I was so into that idea, so fascinated by trying to do that, so fascinated by other conceptual albums throughout history."

One of her biggest literary influences was 20th century German author Herman Hess, with whom El Perro del Mar shares a great love of nature and knack for simplicity. "Stylistically, his poems and his literature is always very simple, but always right on target, spot on," Sarah declared. Many of the songs on From the Valley capture this idea, with catchy one-liners that are repeated over and over. Toward the middle of the album, Inner Island contains a scarce few words aside from the repeated line "Don't cast away your inner island." Rather than having verses, her songs are more like full-length choruses that get right to the point and leave you pondering their intent.

El Perro del Mar had just come off a lengthy North American tour with Lykke Li at the time of our interview, and when asked to name the song she most related to at that time she mentioned "Someday I'll Understand," which plays almost like a lullaby in its peaceful delivery on From the Valley. "It's always pretty strange to end a tour and to have everything behind you," Sarah explained. "You're always in this kind of chaotic state of mind when you're on tour because you put a lot of things on hold … and when it ends, everything kind of just rolls over you, everything just comes back to you – all the emotions that you've been going through but haven't really gone though in a conscious kind of way. So today I think I need 'Someday I'll Understand,' to get myself back in some kind of harmony again."

And although she looks very fondly back on her days touring with Lykke Li, it seems as though El Perro del Mar would be happiest doing backup vocals. If given the option to tour with any artist, living or dead, "I would have to go with a great soul singer: Nina Simone or Aretha [Franklin] or Marvin Gaye. To be a backup singer to anyone of them would actually be a dream come true."

For our own sake, we hope she keeps singing lead and making her own albums. With a truly unique sound that is at times unnerving and at others uplifting, El Perro del Mar has succeeded in her goal to create a timeless piece of work, something that transcends categories of time and genre.