Pitchfork

Arctic Monkeys sprang from Sheffield, but more recently, all the young dudes coming out of the UK rock scene seem to attend the same school in London. The awkwardly capitalized frYars, aka 18-year-old Ben Garrett, got a little help from schoolmates Cajun Dance Party and Bombay Bicycle Club on his early demos. On the title track from frYars' forthcoming The Ides EP, produced by ex-Clor guitarist Luke Smith, Garrett shows he's fallen a bit further from the generic post-Strokes, post-Libertines UK indie tree than most of his peers. While Garrett's debonair Morrissey croon does carry a hint of Julian Casablancas' downtown chic, "The Ides" is a bright keyboard pop song swathed in Postal Service-style digital effects. "You should have died that very night/ Good job for you I wasn't born a killer," Garrett decorously repeats. He cites genre-jumping icons David Bowie and Damon Albarn as influences, and if he turns out to be anything like another UK original, Jarvis Cocker, he'll kill again.