BY ALICE SUH

"This is more like therapy than an interview. You’re helping me understand myself," Farrah singer Jez Ashurst proclaims to me via telephone from a London pub around 9:00 p.m. on a Saturday night. Happy hour has officially just begun for Jez. "It’s drinking time. I’m going to have some pints of Guinness. I must sound like an alcoholic, but it the British way of life. We like drinking."

Curiously and amazingly enough, the pub has been the good luck hub for sudden late night epiphanies and unexpected answers for Jez and the other three members of Farrah. In fact, he credits a night of debauchery at a local watering hole to how the group first came about its name.

"We were in a pub, and were trying to think of a name for the band, and wanted it to be one word. We were all quite drunk and shouting names out, and someone shouted out Farrah," Jez explains. "Then the next night, I had a dream about Farrah Fawcett, so it seemed to make sense to go with the Farrah name. It was an auspicious start, so to speak."

It was also a start that would ultimately lead to the power pop revolution for Farrah. Influenced by the sounds of the Beach Boys, the Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel, their debut album, Moustache, is a unique combination of sounds from the UK’s New Wave period and ‘80s-era American ‘80’s pop.

"I suppose it’s a bit of marriage of the two," says Jez, "which is why the U.K. generally seems to think that we sound quite British and Americans generally seems to think that we sound quite American."

Whether or not, the sounds are British or American pop, Jez is unperturbed to be categorized or labeled as a pop music band. "I don’t mind the pop angle. Pop implies to me as short. It’s snappy, and it’s kind of uplifting. I think a lot of alternative [or] indie bands seem to spend more time striving for credibility and kind of a "high brow" attitude to their music." Jez continues, "At the end of the day, we like jumping around and playing guitars, so I can’t really get too pretentious about it. We all really enjoy playing and we’re all smiling and having a good time. It’d just be strange for us not to do that."

While the tunes and the harmonies may be bubbly and energetic, Jez doesn’t seem to be able to stop writing about tales of heartaches and sad good-byes.

"I’m a great believer in writing about [subjects that] you know. The words are about the woes of relationships, but let’s face it; some of the best songs ever written were about that. It’s obviously a subject that people relate to massively and those are the things that I like to write about, or I find the easiest to write about."

Not every song on Moustache is hopeless or dramatic, though "Sophie Sofair" tells a silly yet fun story of a brief encounter that Jez has with a German school girl in a bar, who teaches him how to toast properly in German.

Another musical enlightenment at a bar? Jez and the boys must be on to something. Maybe more bands ought to try the drink and think approach instead of the drink and sink ending.