THE INSIDER: EL PERRO DEL MAR
The Swedish musician explains to us why love is not pop.
El Perro Del Mar writes some of the most bittersweet love songs we've heard in a long time. Will she break our heart just by talking to us? On the eve of her cross-country US tour, we called up the Swedish musician to find out.
You’re about to embark on a month-long tour—what do you to prepare for it?
My plan is to really try to unwind and take it easy before the tour starts. Just being here [in New York City], for me, is a perfect place to do that. I haven’t had some quiet time in a really long time.
You’re touring with Peter Bjorn & John, you released your new album Love Is Not Pop through The Concrete’s record label, and you recently had a split single with Lykke Li—is the Swedish music scene really tight-knit?
It is definitely. It’s quite a small country, but I think there’s something quite special about the closeness between bands and artists. So we do great things.
The last time I saw you play live, you had incense and picture frames all over the stage. Why do you create this vibe onstage?
[I do it] for me. I feel like it’s important to create an atmosphere that gives me the right feeling. Through that, I think what I do on stage will get through to people in a different way. Small things can be really interesting.
So do you prefer the live experience over other parts of the music process?
I’m a bit of a control freak, and the live setting is a nightmare for control freaks—you’re in the hands of other people. So I think [my preference] is definitely in the studio. But it’s a whole other thing to do live. I think the live situation and the recording situation is a completely different thing, and you have to accept that as a musician and go into different situations with different attitudes.
When do you know you’re ready to move on from one album and start the next?
As soon as I get free time, I think there’s something starting in my mind. I know I have to start working on something, [but] I don’t really know what it is. The whole process [with Love Is Not Pop] started in New York. I know that there was something different, doing something outside of Sweden, where I’d been writing my previous albums, but I don’t know if it had to do with a specific city or just me being somewhere else.
You’ve been playing music since 2003. What’s been the biggest change for you as a musician between then and now?
The person that I was when I made the first album and what I’ve been through, its just eons ago. Musically, I’m still attached to my previous albums, but I can’t really separate myself and the person that I am today, and the person I am today with my music. My music is very much reflective of where I am today. I look back on who I was at the time and the person I was at the time, [and] I feel very happy about it and humble. I’m just constantly wanting to evolve, and hopefully I will continue doing that. That, to me, is what [my music] is about.
Is it a cathartic experience to write and perform these intensely personal songs?
I think the whole cathartic process is already done after the songs are done. So then after that, they become pieces of themselves already, and they exist on their own. My role after that is mostly to interpret them and make them feel like they’re alive. It would be really painful to go through the cathartic process over and over again.
You’ve already collaborated with so many people, but is there someone you’d love to get the chance to work with?
The most exciting thing would be a duet. I would like to do something together with a director or something—I’d like to see what it would be like to work on a Spike Jonze movie.
Name one album that changed your life.
That’s hard, there are so many…I think of Like a Prayer by Madonna, and Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys.
REBECCA WILLA DAVIS
Visit myspace.com/elperrodelmar for more info.
This story was published on November 9, 2009.
