Ingrid Helene Havik Doesn't Want To Be Angry Forever

Ingrid Helene Havik can't wait to get to Australia. The leader of Norwegian quintet Highasakite is in Olso, working on new music and preparing for a performance at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert. But she's already daydreaming about the Australian sun and a stint away from mid-winter deep in the Northern Hemisphere. "It's so dark here," says Havik. "We're getting about six hours of daylight, from nine in the morning to about three. We really need some sun."

The 29-year-old grew up on Norway's West Coast, in the harbour town of Alesund. Her mother was a music teacher, so Havik "always wanted to be a singer"; her earliest memories are of singing along to Mariah Carey. Eventually, she studied at Trondheim's jazz conservatory assuming that, like her mother, she'd grow up to be a teacher. But, in college, she was "really jealous" of friends who were making their own music and threw off the fear that was stopping her from writing her own songs.

"It's impossible to have an outside perspective on stuff you're sitting and writing. So, you think it's terrible, but then you don't want to show it to someone else."

"For so long, I was really scared to even try," she says. "It's so personal. It's impossible to have an outside perspective on stuff you're sitting and writing. So, you think it's terrible, but then you don't want to show it to someone else."

Havik was 23 when she began writing her own songs out front of Highasakite. The band's sound — with Havik playing a zither and grandeur summoned from thundering percussion and hollered vocals — was light and joyous on their 2012 debut All That Floats Will Rain, but things grew darker with 2014's gloomy Silent Treatment and 2016's furious Camp Echo.

"The songs on Camp Echo are mainly inspired by political stuff, like, for instance, George Bush's speech about going to war in Iraq in 2003," Havik states. "I just wanted to write some songs that were more aggressive, more angry. I didn't really know what they were going to be about, [it was] just that I felt like they needed to be angry."

Playing the songs from Camp Echo, though, has been joyous. "Because the songs are so up-tempo," Havik says, "people just respond to that. There's been a lot of dancing, and a lot of light. It's been really cool. A lot of fun. We're going to keep playing these songs for a really long time."

Yet even the Camp Echo jams will remain live staples, Havik says they "feel so far away"; hard for the not-particularly-talkative singer to talk about given her head is currently elsewhere. With her and drummer Trond Bersu writing and recording songs, and ideas, for the forthcoming fourth Highasakite LP, she's consumed by those thoughts.

"That often happens with songwriters, when you start out on something new, you forget all about what you've done before," Havik says. But, she's not entirely forthcoming on these new songs, either. "It's hard for me to talk about," offers Havik. "But, I can say, we're in a completely different place right now. I don't want to write things that are aggressive. I want to write really beautiful stuff."