“One of the things that made Sarah Assbring's debut as El Perro del Mar so compelling back in 2006 was the way it stripped girl-group pop songs down to their barest essentials and used them to express immense inner sadness. Writing the sparest possible arrangements and singing her lyrics in a voice halfway to a sob, she could make the phrase "be-bop-a-lula" sound like more like Anne Sexton than Gen”
