Ben Garrett, aka frYars, is a skinny, wavy-haired 18-year-old London-based singer-songwriter with a Roxy swagger, and whose velvety baritone sounds like it’s emerging from someone twice his age and stature. It makes perfect sense he was brought to our attention by a friend (thanks, Kristi), who heard of him through Beirut’s sax player while she was traveling across the puddle. Here, though, instead of a youthful croon wrapping around Balkan brass, Garrett sets up his intelligent tales of death and happiness within danceable, but totally pop-rock synth and piano symphonies, giving a sort of Bowie lift-off and a bit of that Jarvis suavity to the proceedings. Garrett, who runs with the fellow BTW Cajun Dance Party and Bombay Bicycle Club crew, recently released his four-song debut, The Ides EP — we’re hooked on every last note of it. For starters there’s the title track with its irresistible “You should have died that very night / Good job for you, I wasn’t born a killer” hooks and propulsively dark, but glam undertow. The tune’s appropriately hued video — gothy masked ballerina in her own world, a sharply dressed Garrett amid a cast of walking lampshades blinking out code — is raring to go after the jump, along with a pair of MP3s from the EP. “You took my life, you took my pride…”
Download | (Happy)
photo by Elisha Smith-Leverock