El Perro Del Mar, with room to breathe

[August Brown reports from Tuesday's proceedings at the Ex Plx, the recently

opened new room downstairs from the Echo in Echo Park:]

Maybe it was

the reverb in the cavernous (and only one-third full) Ex Plx, but El Perro Del Mar’s icy doo-wop suites felt far

more rich and wounded than they do on the Swedish singer’s charming but terribly

precious full-length.

With an appropriately rumpled three-piece band in tow, singer Sarah Assbring seems to

have ditched her schoolmarmish reserve on record for a more bohemian and sensual live

show. Cuts from her self-titled full length like “I Can’t Talk About It” and “Coming

Down The Hill” felt inviting in a coffeehouse-troubadour way (this time, that’s not an

insult), and the crowd responded in kind by spending most of the set sitting on the

floor. Even her signature “shoop-do-wops” -- usually the make-or-break point for

potential fans -- seemed less affected given the sparseness of the lineup and Assbring’s

dreamy-English-major stage presence. Her album is meticulous and pretty, but it sounds

much better when she turns the twee knob down a few clicks.

||| El Perro Del Mar performs tonight (with the One AM Radio and March resident Greg Laswell) at the Hotel Cafe.

Download: The One AM Radio's "In the

Time We've Got," off the album "This Too Will Pass," which was

released Feb. 20.

◊ ◊ ◊

Touts for Wednesday, March

14: British electropop trio Fujiya

& Miyagi play Club NME at Spaceland. ... Dr. Dog brings its scruffy pop to the Troubadour.

... Locals OK Stranger headline at

Safari Sam's. ... And for some reggae flavor, the Abyssinians visit Dub Club at the Echo.