Seattle-based artist SYML played at the 27 Club in ByWard Market, as part of his Where’s My Love Tour on May 3. SYML, whose real name is Brian Fennell, is a solo artist who blends synth, piano and guitar into ethereal alternative/indie/pop tunes.
Fennell described his music much more simply.
“It’s sad as fuck,” he said.
SYML is pronounced “sim-mel,” which translates to “simple” in Welsh. Fennell said the name acts as a reminder for him to live life simply. The name is also a tribute to Fennell’s heritage.
Fennell was born to Welsh parents, but was adopted and raised outside of Seattle in Washington. He said his adoption was “very closed,” and he knows little about his birth parents.
“When I was younger, I had a flag on my wall, and I was like, ‘I’m Welsh,’ but now I have a young family of my own, and as I got older, it became less important to find things out about my history,” he said.
This abstract sense of identity that Fennell takes from his past now fuels a lot of his music.
“I don’t know, I have a void to fill though. I found it more inspirational to live in the abstract of what an identity is,” he added.
I’m intrigued by a lot of those things.”
Fennell trained classically on the piano and studied music education at university, but didn’t start writing music till he was in college.
His first project was an indie rock band called ‘Barcelona,’ which he started straight out of college in 2005. That project naturally came to an end because he said he and his fellow band members both had young families and had been touring for a long time.
“The plan for SYML was just to release songs one by one and get them on TV shows, but then a bit of momentum picked up, and here I am touring again,” Fennell said. “It’s great because I get to see all these new cities, but I wish my family could have come along.”
Much of that success was fuelled by his single “Where’s My Love,” which recently went gold in Canada, and has 145 million streams worldwide. It was also used in Olympic ice skating routine by a Korean skater.
“My lens [which] I see the world through, is a little darker, which I feel is pretty accurate for how most people feel,” said Fennell. “A lot of my music I take from internal dissections of my personality. But, it’s also very external, and when I realized everyone feels these kinds of emotions, it became very therapeutic.”
The therapeutic nature of songwriting is something that Fennell says he turns to a lot in his life. During his performance, he performed a new song, which will be part of an album that will come out sometime in the new year.
The song deals with the prospect of losing his child, who was having surgery later that week due to a brain condition she contracted while she was still a baby.
The tour for that album will begin in the fall. For now, the remaining tour dates will see a couple of shows in cities in the United States, before Fennel travels to Denmark, Sweden and Norway.
“It’s pretty cool because Barcelona never got to go to Europe,” Fennel said. “But yeah, we’re going over for two purposes, trying to build the radio side of things there and testing out some new markets I’ve never tried, in preparation for the album coming out next year.”
Photo by Bailey Moreton
