Foto-© Thania Rodriguez

Der Singer-Songwriter und Produzent SYML stellt dieser Tage sein neues Album Nobody Lives Here vor. Das neue Album ist Brian Fennells bisher klarstes Werk, in dem er Trauer, Verlust und Sterblichkeit direkt ins Auge blickt, unerschütterlich und harmonisch. Es wurde von ihm geschrieben, aufgenommen und produziert und ist geprägt von der Erkenntnis, dass das Leben ein Zwiespalt ist, ein flüchtiger Moment. Während er die Anwesenheit des Verlustes akzeptiert, heißt er andere in seinem Raum mit Melodien, Texten, einer Slide-Gitarre oder dem Summen eines Cellos willkommen und reflektiert über den Lauf der Zeit, das Gewicht von Erwartungen und die intime, manchmal beunruhigende Schönheit von Veränderungen.

Während der letztwöchigen komplett ausverkauften Tour zum neuen Album, gab es auch eine Signing-Session bei Rough Trade Berlin, die wir nutzten, um Brian für ein Interview mit Portrait Shooting zu treffen!

Your new album is called Nobody Lives Here. Can you talk me a bit through what the story is that you’re trying to tell here?
Yeah, it’s basically like when you live somewhere that you should no longer live, or maybe you had a relationship or a special time in your life, in a place that you no longer live. It’s the idea that you’re passing by this whole place and remembering your former life, and it’s sort of about the passage of time and how that can be quite sad. But you know, for me, that’s like, having kids or feeling myself getting older. But in order to sort of be present, we have to be looking ahead and behind constantly, because we’re sort of constantly on the move. So the idea is that nobody lives here for long. That’s kind of the more accurate title. You know, time is short, so best to be present.

So the album begins with a lot of spacious shimmers of pedal steel and saxophone that are hanging in suspense, and then throughout the album, you often pair that with the chordal clarity of a piano or a guitar. How did you approach choosing instrumentation to set an emotional tone for this record?
Yeah, well, I think the trick is like, I’m always sort of a sucker for atmospheric shimmers as well as the more organic. I think you can separate it in terms of, like, we wanted to be organic. And so how do you get the higher ethereal sounds with the more like human voice level sounds like guitar and piano and again, like pedal steel is one of my favorite instruments, just like cello, because they emulate a human voice, singing or crying. So it’s about what instruments help you communicate the spirit of the song. And when we have songs about time passing, you know, in the happiness and the sad times, I think those organic instruments that that sound human, are like the best way of communicating that

You’ve described your music as “finding a sense of comfort in sadness.” And on a song like Careful – in which you ask introspective questions about life passing by – you alternate between a somewhat quiet melancholy and a very powerful roar at the end. How do you try to find and convey comfort in a song like this?
I don’t know if it’s a startling comfort a little bit. I think the idea is that when you’re starting out in a career, you know you’re worried about making the right decisions, like you don’t want to screw up the later part of your career, or when you’re in the middle of where I think I am, it’s easy to look to the sides, to your peers, to see, to compare. And that can be very dangerous, because I think that you inevitably miss honest moments if you’re worried about what other people are doing, when they’re just trying to be their true, honest selves as well. So it’s meant to be like a wake-up instead of soothing. It’s a wake-up sort of startling reminder that you’re okay and you know to be honest with who you are and what makes you happy.

You’ve mentioned that “putting yourself inside a sad song is still a good place to feel happy”, which is something that made me wonder a bit. For instance, on The White Light of the Morning you reflect on a longing to meet a lost one. And it made me wonder, how does this perspective of finding happiness in such a song inform your songwriting and maybe even your daily life?
Yeah, you know, I’ve lost people in my life and anytime, I think it’s almost a religious experience when music can comfort and help ask questions or answer questions that are impossible to answer. So, when we lose somebody, we don’t know what happens after that, right? Like, we just know that they’re not here anymore. And when I’ve lost people in the past, I’ve met them in dreams again. And I’m not, a dream person, I don’t really think too much about dreams. But that’s what I want to talk about. I mean, we talk about when people die, like, oh, there’s this bright light. And, you know, sort of stereotypical, words about loss, but I like the idea of, well, maybe it is sort of a dream state, where you’re elevated beyond human understanding, and you can’t really control it. It’s just sort of is. It doesn’t really need your action or your opinion about it to exist. It just is. And I find that quite beautiful. It’s a way to communicate to somebody who’s not there anymore, that you love them and that you know that you’re okay, and that they can kind of communicate that they’re they’re okay too. So it’s like a piece in the sadness.

I want to move on to inspirations. For instance, on Please Slow Down, you really have a more folky 60s type of sound, and on other acoustic songs like it. Is there something about that era that made you want to explore it on this record? Or did you find influences in different places?
Yeah. I mean, I think that every generation of writers or people who record are influenced and infatuated with music that’s come before them, and then they decide how they want to convey those current emotions through using different instruments or sounds or whatever. But, yeah, I think that there’s, I don’t know if it’s exactly 60s for me, but I think there’s, like an Americana vibe. I’m from the Northwest in the States, so it’s not very country. But there’s, there’s sort of country everywhere. That’s like, the purpose of country is that it sort of is the folk music of where you are. So I grew up with a ton of folk music, like Simon and Garfunkel and the more folky Tom Petty stuff, a lot of Beach Boys. So like, a lot of interesting harmonies as well. But my favorite, most comfortable place for a song writing is like four chords and relatively short and not a lot of ornate instrumentation or singing, and mostly because I’m not, good at that. Like, if I was maybe very good at soloing, or, like, operatic singing or something maybe I would explore that more. But this is the most comfortable. This feels like a very comfortable album to me. I want people to feel comfortable when they listen to it, so I stuck to what’s comfortable for me. So that’s like that kind of concise folk based Americana singing and writing.

I read that you grew up playing classical piano – which is something that is featured prominently – and listening to grunge, and I was wondering which acts and which grunge influences can we maybe find on this album?
Well, I think the more important thing that I took away from the grunge era was that it was all very melodic rock for the most part. It wasn’t just like being loud to be loud like it was. It most certainly was. But grunge also took its time, like a lot of Nirvana, Soundgarden. Sound Garden was probably my favorite post-grunge band and Pearl Jam. There’s just, you know, definitely energetic moments. I’m trying to think through the album, if there’s anything specifically grunge related: Something Beautiful and Bright, that’s a song on the record that, if you listen to the verses, kind of grungy, if you had more grunge instruments in there. That might be a little bit grunge influenced, for sure, but I think, yeah, what I, what I gravitated towards in those bands, was the use of space and that there was melody, was driving the song. That’s what I naturally gravitate towards.

I hear maybe a bit of grunge on Careful if you consider any quiet-loud grunge thing grunge. But that also seems a bit far fetched, that could well be an 80s style power ballad.
Let’s talk a bit about your non musical influences. Your cover work artwork is very specific. It evokes quite well the tone of the album. To me, it seems like you had a visual in mind for the album. And I was wondering, are there any films, books, or other things that we can find back onto this album?
Um, you know, it’s interesting. I think visually, you’re right: it looks like it sounds. That’s what we wanted. It’s sort of cozy. It’s sort of cold, it’s sort of warm, it’s nature, it’s organic. I love the shows like The Last of Us. I’m obsessed with apocalyptic material. So like, a book that always is inspirational to me is The Road by Cormac McCarthy. A movie, an older movie that I, that I have recently been talking about, is called Love Liza. It’s from 2007 I think, and it’s just so sad and beautiful. And those are like the types of art that I always get influenced from, and where there’s like survival amidst the end of the world is my type of inspiration, for sure. I’m thinking of one movie right now, 28 days later, the first one, which is frightening and but the way that shots like very filmy, very warm, very organic too, which makes it feel very human. And I think that’s probably the closest visual that I can think of, just without all like the horrific zombie shit.

And so how did this cover in particular came to be? I mean, it matches the song and the lyrics, of course, as well. Can you for example tell me a bit about maybe what house this is?
It’s a farm on Vashon Island. It’s close to where I live, and we found it. There’s a lot of similarities between the UK and Norway, that’s kind of a combination of where I live. And so we found it just like looking for locations. And went there for a few days to, you know, capture images and video. And it was interesting, because, like, the album had been done by that point. But when we were there, I was like, also could have been a great place to make an album, which is like, because I, you know, have kids and a life outside of music, like it’s hard for me to go away for a long time and work on music. So it’s more about finding what fits after the fact and then going there to capture it.

I want to talk a little bit about another theme present on the album, and a bit about how it relates to you, because the lyricism and melodies, they really explore a lot of themes of acceptance and learning to live with disappointment. What personal experiences or emotions led you to delve more deeply into this theme?
Yeah, it’s a combination, I think, of just what comes as you grow older, and that is, you know it’s more it’s more likely that you’ll lose people, it’s more likely that you’ll lose opportunities, and who you are changes and who you’re in if you’re in love with somebody or in a relationship with somebody like I am, they change. And so it’s a bit of like you have to learn to let go and fall out of love with the idea that you thought was true or thought would be there forever. And in some ways, it feels a little bit like I’m trying to tell my kids about this, because I want to protect them from how much it hurts. But the reality is, that’s how we learn, is through things that might hurt us, and that’s a really hard lesson to live out. As an adult too. So yeah, this acceptance of that things that change is inevitable and that loss is inevitable, but that you can choose to grow and embrace new things because you’ve let something go, I think, is probably the biggest challenge and lesson.

Yeah, from what I read, you’ve mentioned your kids before, and I hear you talk about your kids, I was wondering, would you consider making your next album, a kids album?
I thought about making like a lullaby album before, for like young kids. That’s something I’m interested in. I think what I thought you were gonna ask and I’m interested in is involving them in the music, which I am, I’m totally into I think that’s that’d be really cool in the future.

SYML Tour:
29.01.26 Schlachthof, Wiesbaden
31.01.26 Technikum, München
06.02.26 Metropol, Berlin
07.02.26 Docks, Hamburg
08.02.26 Carlswerk Victoria, Köln