The Thousands

It’s always a bit weird when two different corners of your music taste collide. Like when your old high school friends crash your 25th birthday party it can be awkward and unnerving to see if two separate worlds can…mesh.

That’s pretty much how I felt when Swedish Shangri-La esque songstress El Perro Del Mar (aka Sarah Assbring) was getting Rasmus Hagg, the guy from Studio (nu-Balearic funk duo) to produce her latest mini-album, Love is Not Pop.

However, Assbring and Hagg pull off their collaboration brilliantly and the album comes off sounding like one made of singular vision rather than a floundering push-pull of styles.**Though Assbring continues to be the sad sack singer of choice to mope-away-the-day with, you can now do it to the best beach ‘n’ breeze instrumentation going round. The sound is an obvious break from EPDM’s previous Spector-fetish work – and her vocals (still beautiful) are now more akin to Stevie Nicks than Mary Weiss.

Love is Not Pop – a line lifted from Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris sets the tone for the album – apparently love doesn’t sound like pop, it sounds more like heartbreak. Aw.