Syml: On conquering the internet by accident

In late 2015, Seattle songwriter Brian Fennell received an email from his manager. Producers at Teen Wolf, a ratings-gobbling MTV remake of Michael J Fox’s 1985 furball-fest, wanted to use his song ‘Where’s My Love’. Having never seen Teen Wolf – a cult hit with a huge streaming audience – Fennell typed words to the effect of “fine, whatever”, pressed ‘send’, and got on with his day.

At the time he had bigger things to worry about. For the best part of a decade he’d fronted Seattle four-piece Barcelona. The group specialised in Coldplay-esque anthemic rock and were not to be confused with an outfit of the same name from Virginia (briefly a big deal in the 2000s). But if Barcelona were Chris Martin-esque on record, they certainly weren’t drowning in Coldplay levels of loot. “Touring was the thing that was perpetuating Barcelona,” says Fennell. “But two of us had young families. I didn’t want to spend all the time on the road.”

He didn’t know it then – but Teen Wolf was about to change his life and career. ‘Where’s My Love’, a delicate piece he’d written with an eye on film or TV placing, took off on the back of the show. Suddenly his phone was figuratively ringing off the hook: people wanting to see him perform and to hear more music.

Which was great – but also problematic. Taking the stage name Syml, he decided to walk away from Barcelona and to start over as a solo artist. But it’s one thing making the fateful decision to begin anew, and an altogether different one creating a new body of work more or less overnight – which was expected of him post-‘Where’s My Love’.

“I didn’t even have a grand plan to release ‘Where’s My Love’,” says Fennell. “I thought it would fit with film and TV – it’s very emotional and cinematic. It was also the spark that kicked off the need for more music. The singer is thrilled to be in Dublin the day we speak for a gig at Whelan’s. U2 are a big influence – he made sure to catch Bono and crew when they brought their Joshua Tree tour to Seattle in 2017.

“I discovered U2 at a formative age. I saw them on the PopMart tour and again when they did Joshua Tree. I got really far into them.”

Seattle is a strange place to come of age musically he feels. Grunge was a thing of course – and he remembers it from school. Yet since that scene fizzled out, a “Seattle artist” has become a nebulous concept. He contrasts that with Portland in nearby Oregon. Say “Portland band” and people know exactly what you mean. That’s not the case with Seattle.

“Not to hit on anyone specifically but post-grunge Seattle has never had a cohesive musical identity. I feel not very connected to the scene. I haven’t even played in Seattle as Syml. Crowds are very low key – it feels cold when people cross their arms when they come and see you.”

Syml means “simple” in Welsh. Fennell’s distant ancestors hail from the principality and, in his youth, he embraced an ersatz Welsh identity – going so far as to have the national flag on his wall. He recently visited Wales for the first time and while he doesn’t want to be one of those Americans, he nonetheless felt something akin to a connection.

“It’s a bad-ass flag,” he laughs. “Wales is beautiful – it’s a really ambiguous place… which people maybe vacation to. I don’t think it’s massively known for much. But I think there’s pride too – the language is strange and beautiful.”
The In My Body EP is out now.