The Honeydrips

Part of the uncannily bountiful Gothenburg, Sweden, music scene of the late 2000s, the Honeydrips is the one-man project of Mikael Carlsson, a former member of the punky pop band <a href="spotify:artist:19Vx9KxvniB9eVlFG0DyOi">Dorotea</a> and the wistful Kissing Mirrors. Frequently compared to fellow Gothenburgers <a href="spotify:artist:7tzI4rSFTHafjF18ZrNZWx">Jens Lekman</a> (a sometime tourmate) and <a href="spotify:artist:4ps52NgTUPV9accMr5TMBw">the Tough Alliance</a> (on whose Sincerely Yours imprint he releases his records), Carlsson shares both artists' playfully romantic sensibility and their tendency for winking, omnivorous appropriation of pop music and culture, past and present. His influences are many and manifest -- at one point, his MySpace Top Eight friends list included <a href="spotify:artist:3BqAAo5E60L15TcFgWI8xH">Felt</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:5zaXYwewAXedKNCff45U5l">Dusty Springfield</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:3RGLhK1IP9jnYFH4BRFJBS">the Clash</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:3ESG6pj6a0LvUKklENalT6">Doris Day</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:09hVIj6vWgoCDtT03h8ZCa">A Tribe Called Quest</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:7kQFwkR1mTWfGdtZfcvrZP">Claudine Longet</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:2u7xZP39dtED9EuRX9MUwu">Orange Juice</a>, and <a href="spotify:artist:3rJ3m1tM6vUgiWLjfV8sRf">Jimmy Cliff</a>, all of whom are valid reference points to a greater or lesser extreme; <a href="spotify:artist:3BqAAo5E60L15TcFgWI8xH">Felt</a> in particular -- but his music is neither overly gimmicky nor eclectic for the sake of eclecticism, since it's all grounded by Carlsson's classicist indie pop songwriting. After a sporadic series of CD-Rs, MP3s, and a 2005 7" single on Smashing Time Records, the Honeydrips' debut album, Here Comes the Future, arrived in 2007. Including the singles "(Lack Of) Love Will Tear Us Apart" and "I Wouldn't Know What to Do" (whose B-sides included remixes from yet more city-mates, <a href="spotify:artist:2oyNl6Ds6rY648mcUFhVgT">the Embassy</a> and <a href="spotify:artist:23MIhFHpoOuhtEHZDrrnCS">the Field</a>), it was awarded the Manifest Prize (an alternative Swedish Grammy) for Pop/Electronica Album of the Year. ~ K. Ross Hoffman, Rovi