With Karin Dreijer solo outing, Fever Ray taking the top spot on our Bloglin’s Best Albums of 2009 I thought it was appropriate to do a Digging for Fire featuring her first band, Honey Is Cool. Honey is cool were a Swedish indie-pop band active in the mid 90s for whom Karin sang and played guitar. They never really made much of a splash in the U.S., single “Nach Heart” was as close as they got. I’m not sure though if they were or weren’t fairly popular in their home country though.

Honey Is Cool truthfully are your standard fair when it comes to 90s indie-pop. They veer a bit into the Dream Pop/Shoegaze side of things but never did anything I’d remotely consider revolutionary or even influential. Crazy Love is their second album, released in 1997 and is the one I feel is their most fluid. It’s smooth, sweet and enjoyable. You can even here the faintest of seedlings of the Knife in the electro-tinged “The Lion”. I felt with the Knife and now Fever Ray’s success people might have some interest to hear where Karin started her musical career and fully put into perspective just how far she has come. You’ll instantly recognize her voice, even though without all of the effects it does sound a whole lot more childlike rather than menacing (as we’ve grown accustomed to).

Listening back to Honey is Cool after a full decade of Karin Dreijer dominating the elctro-pop landscape is a lot like going back and listening to Bjork in the Sugarcubes, just not quite as good. I’m mostly recommending this to either die-hard Knife fans or 90s dream-pop completists.

Honey Is Cool – Crazy Love

- My Pal the Crook