Artist Close-Up: SYML Aims For The Simple Spirit In “In My Body”
Bon Iver and Father John Misty are known for their capacity to orchestrate emotion. From depression to love, they make music feel like a platform for their truths, and SYML does the same. With his new EP, In My Body, he reveals that you can’t hide your spirit.
In a way, we all become discovered. No matter how many masks we wear with friends, loved ones, and enemies, they all cover the same face: ours. SYML seems aware of this truth, which is why he creates music to leave your soul feeling bare. You feel emotionally stripped with tracks, “Wildfire”, “Ghosts”, and “Harvest Moon”. He lyrically describes the bonds we have with others and ourselves they are natural landscapes. From mountains to plains, how we travel in our relationships is dependent on our esteem, of which SYML is trying to find the root for his lack of it. For him, it is our experience of sadness and suffering, as individuals, that give us the common-ground we need to find happiness together.
If you ask SYML, he will say his music is “pretty dark”, but it is also pensive and calm. He sings like he is gently waking you up from your sleep; allowing you to slowly let go of fantasy so that you can enter harsher realities with a little grace. Waking up is never fun, even if spiritually, which is why he aligns his instrumentals like they are silent stars; though they shine, they still sound quiet in the night. The Welsh percussion professor, got his name SYML from the language, which means “simple”. For him, as a person and artist, simplicity is his main goal, which might be why he sings to hurt and loss. Nothing leaves you observing the simplicity of life, then the loss of something that gave you it.
You never feel simpler then when you are absolutely happy and completely devastated. These emotional extremes are indescribable, but show you that humanity is simple because it is intangible. When you lose something you wanted or someone you loved, it hurts because they made you feel present, and beyond the need for labels and descriptions. As SYML’s light falsetto billows through songs such as, “The War” and “Body”, you feel as if you are witnessing beauty. For all that he sings to feeling low, his voice surpasses with its high register/ might. Thus, In My Body is a record to live in your heart. Click Here For More Information ON SYML.
