– Showing reality as it is comes completely naturally to me

Words by Eilen Anthoniussen / Photo: Benjamin Hansen - PLEASE NOTE! This article was printed in Atlantic Review 1 - 2022, which came out in May the same year.

She came thundering out through the loudspeakers and hammering into our hearts with a rock sound that echoes a punk wave from 20 years ago. Her name fills headlines, water bottles and beer cans, her face and body fill front pages, and her calendar is filling up with enquiries about concerts at tempting festivals.

We are talking, of course, about the singer and musician Brimheim, who to all appearances is making a meteoric career in the music world. In the autumn of 2020 she sent her first EP, Myself misspelled, out into the world, and already at the start of 2022 she was back with a full release under her own name, entitled Can’t hate myself into a different shape.

But ask the woman at the centre of it and it has not gone quickly at all. This is about time.

- This is quite extraordinary. I am overwhelmed by the reception, and at the same time it feels entirely natural to me. I have worked at becoming a musician for 20 years. I wrote my first song when I was 12, and I have always known that there is some kind of x-factor inside me that I have to get out one way or another. I knew I had what it takes. It feels as though I have earned this, she says cheerfully.

The praise for the music on Can’t hate myself into a different shape and Myself misspelled has been plentiful and glowing. At this year's FMA she was honoured with no fewer than three awards: Song of the Year (“Hey Amanda”), Female Singer of the Year and Group of the Year. The songs are in rotation on the various music channels in both the Faroe Islands and Denmark, the Danish media are talking about a big new talent making her mark on the Danish music scene, and she is compared to names like Patti Smith, Florence and the Machine and Avril Lavigne.

- It is lovely to be compared to names I look up to myself. I take that as a compliment. But it is not something I think about when I make music. When I write a song or perform, my aim is to be as present as I can in the feelings I have. I do not think much about style. I have listened to a lot of rock music, and I was young when Avril Lavigne came along. She was so rebellious, and she stood for something else, something different, and I remember thinking: are you allowed to do that? I have always wanted to be a bit different myself, and I have wanted to shake things up. I am definitely anti-authoritarian and rebellious, so perhaps I just followed that road.

- When I was younger I thought a lot about style, and about what kind of music I wanted to make, and I have tried different things too, but today I do not think like that at all. I think more: what do I like, and what is genuine for me?

32-year-old Brimheim, whose full name is Helena Heinesen Rebensdorff, has listened to a great deal of rock ever since she was young and carrying musical dreams, and it is without doubt rock music that shaped her at a formative age.

- I have listened to a lot of Nirvana and Radiohead too, and punk rock has captivated me as well, but that does not mean I want to do the same thing. I do it my way and try to take something that is vulnerable and put it into my rock music.

One thing reviewers fasten on is precisely the fragile and honest quality in Brimheim. It applies to virtually everything. To the lyrics, the performances and the way she steps forward in the media. In the space of six months, for instance, she has been on the cover of the Danish music magazine Gaffa no fewer than twice. The second time topless.

- I am not shy in the least, she laughs, when the question of the cover comes up.

- Showing reality as it is comes completely naturally to me, but I do understand that people think it is too much when it comes to showing skin. My music and the interview in the magazine are about being vulnerable, after all, so those pictures made good sense too. It is simply another way of expressing my message.

With her releases Helena has lifted the lid on mental health struggles, which are a central part of her lyrics. She has described in the media how, ever since she was young, she has battled mental health difficulties that have brought periods of depression with them.

- It is a part of me, and I see it as a condition of life. Being human is challenging, and we all have to go through all sorts of things. This is where music can heal. And that is what happens when I sing, write and perform. Music has to be personal for me. Music can perfectly well be ‘fun and games’, but it gives me the most when something is at stake.

In reality Helena was not doing well when the songs for her latest release were written. Just as the reception of Myself misspelled was at its height, she was struck by a sweeping depression that drained all her energy. But she resolved to work her way back up, and when she sat down in the studio in the late summer of 2021, she was able, with the help of the recorder on her phone, to whittle together a few fragments that turned out to be a whole set of gems. Something you can hear when reviewers remark on the quality of the lyrics – and when fans recognise themselves in them.

- It means a lot that people write to me and say they can see themselves in my music. That they feel it is genuine and authentic. That it comes from a place that is not so calculated.

This sensitivity and the mental health struggles that this rock star with the bright voice talks about are somehow hard to reconcile. And for exactly that reason she is so interesting.

- It is such a divided thing: I find it easy to step forward, to perform and to write. Having a psychiatric diagnosis is simply a condition I live with, and that is how I have to work. I use it therapeutically. It is a kind of poetic stylisation that I try to place in a universal context. But when I have to talk about it in interviews, I immediately become shyer. I feel more naked. In reality, though, songwriting is a free space. Nobody knows what is genuine and what is not. So it is a room where I am allowed to play a little.

Helena has always dreamt of becoming a musician. She played with several bands through her teenage years, and she has taken an extensive education specialising in songwriting.

- I have always applied myself to writing good songs and to exploring how best to convey thoughts and feelings. I learnt a great deal at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory in particular. I had a gifted lyrics teacher who has taught me so much about writing, just as I have learnt a lot about being on stage. The big question for me is how I can be present in the moment. That is part of everything, after all.

It was also at the conservatory that she began working with the artist name Brimheim, which is at once so beautiful and so powerful – and such a very good fit for her.

- Brimheim is a good way for me to tie myself to the Faroese, it is an inheritance from my mother, and it is beautiful as well. It sounds properly beautiful. And it is so obvious a choice for me.

It is no secret that Brimheim has had her hands full around the release of Can’t hate myself into a different shape. Her days are packed with appointments, and there is a lot of rehearsing and a lot of performing on the schedule.

- Yes, the record is out now, so now I have to work out what to do with the next step. I have just been on tour, so at the moment I am resting a little after it. Otherwise I go to a lot of meetings about strategy, and we have meetings with booking agents and meetings about social media and so on. It is terribly time-consuming. I work a great deal more than full time.

- Yes, there are several concerts and festivals that are exciting. I have also had sponsorship from clothing brands, at the moment I am part of a water campaign, and not long ago I was part of a beer campaign. It is an entertaining way to work with marketing, where getting your name onto beer cans or water bottles reaches people beyond your usual listeners. Hopefully we will do something with television as well.

Helena works as a solo artist, which means that she performs with different bands and does not have a fixed band behind her.

- It is necessary to do it this way when I have so much on. So usually there are five of us on stage.

So there will be five people travelling around performing Brimheim's music this summer. So far she has been booked to play Hotel Cecil in Copenhagen, SPOT in Aarhus, The Great Escape in Brighton alongside Kóboykex and Joe and the Shitboys, Heartland at Egeskov Castle, the Roskilde Festival, as well as a concert in Berlin. And Faroese audiences can look forward to hearing Brimheim at Voxbotn.

- This is certainly what will be the focus in the coming year, getting out into the world to perform. And then we go back into the studio on 4 April.