Danish alt-pop artist Brimheim shares a new single, 'hey amanda', ahead of her new album can’t hate myself into a different shape, out January 28th on W.A.S Entertainment.
Today rising Danish alt-pop artist Brimheim shares a new single, 'hey amanda', taken from her excellent and haunting debut album, can’t hate myself into a different shape, arriving January 28th on W.A.S Entertainment (GRETA, Rebecca Lou).
Brimheim says of the track:
"Obviously there are plenty of great romantic love songs, but for some reason there aren’t a lot of love songs about friendships, even though they’re often just as crucial and formative as any crush or relationship. ‘hey amanda’ is my take on a platonic love song. Amanda and I became best friends when we were 10 and it is one of my closest relationships to this day. The impact our friendship has had on my life is hard to overstate – especially because we grew our shared interest in art and music together at a very formative time in our lives.
I feel like that’s pretty special – to have grown into the adult versions of ourselves and still be friends. I’m an only child, so Amanda is the closest thing I have to a sibling.
She lives in Montreal now, so unfortunately we don’t get to see each other that often.
I wanted to write a song that works as a celebration of our friendship and revels in the nostalgia of our childhood beginnings."
Spoken like a true millennial, Brimheim's ever-present existential crisis has given birth to a beautiful world of music where weeping guitars and deep, intimate vocals make time stand still. Behind Brimheim is Copenhagen-based musician and songwriter Helena Heinesen Rebensdorff. Her stage name is a homage to her Faroese roots, translating to 'home of the breaking waves.' Inspired by artists like PJ Harvey, Mitski and Florence Welch, Brimheim possesses an emotional darkness and sense of mystique that pushes forward with pop's promise of catchy choruses and melodies. Her lyrics are filled with anxiety, confusion and vulnerability, but the sadness is always accompanied by humour and hope. In the fall of 2020 she released her debut EP 'Myself Misspelled', which received an abundance of praise from Danish media and a nomination for the 'Hope of the Year' award by The Association of Danish Music Critics. In addition, she was selected for 'Track of The Week' by Denmark's largest national radio station, P3.
Other tracks from can't hate myself into a different shape tackle themes of self-hatred, self-harm, paralyzing social anxiety and empowerment, all done through a juxtaposed layering of soft and dark sounds to reflect her inner chaos. She recruited producer Søren Buhl to attain her goal of expanding and enriching the sonic palette on this introspective record.
Together they created a collage of influences, filled with indie-pop guitar and electronic soundscapes, reminiscent of Phoebe Bridgers and Björk, respectively, to accompany Brimheim's vulnerable lyrics and gorgeously foreboding vocal prowess. Together the two also experimented with alternative production methods–the album's title track features a synth put through a pedal that resamples the input, and the closing track 'Hurting Me 4 Fun' features an original 909 drum machine ran through a bunch of pedals, giving the production an unpredictable nature, in turn reflecting many of the themes she brings to her insightful storytelling.