Between streaming breakthroughs, shifting cities and prepping a new album by The F16s, the Chennai/Goa artist is just feeling grateful
Towards the end of Chennai artist JBABE’s short film for his new album A Little Larger Than The Entire Universe, as the song “Days I Will Endure” comes on, Joshua Fernandez lights a cigarette and sets himself ablaze in what is a shockingly apt moment for a slow-burning song to kick in.
He moves a little cautiously but also with a sense of abandonment for at least a minute and a half before the flames are put out by his crew, which includes filmmaker and longtime collaborator Lendrick Kumar. It’s the climactic scene in a film that takes a page from war movies, showing JBABE being carried across a battlefield as a soldier runs past explosives.
The film is still criminally under-watched, with about 1,000 views on YouTube at the time of publishing this article, but JBABE is unfazed. He’s basking in other wins – crossing the 100,000 listeners mark on Spotify, moving from his home base of Chennai, prepping for live shows, and later in the year, releasing the next album by The F16s where he serves as vocalist and guitarist.
He looks back at the pyro scene in particular. “I was 100 percent committed, like, ‘Let’s do it. Do your worst.’ I even told [Lendrick], if something bad happens, do not stop rolling. That’s what I think art should capture, it should distill some form of fantasy that you do not see in real life,” he says.
Admitting that he was “being kind of selfish” about wanting to experience having explosives rigged to his jacket, he was lathered in a fire retardant as the adrenaline kicked in. “Sharath [the pyro tech expert on set] said ‘Just make sure it [the fire] does not reach your beard, because you will catch fire then.’ Lendrick was like, ‘Josh, I know it’s your first time, but we have only one take. Go as long as you can.” While he did suffer “mild burns” from the experience, it was just one of the many wild scenes from the short film. In another, he’s carrying a person through the jungle in what looks like it’s straight out of the cult comedy film Tropic Thunder. But there’s a deeper layer to it.
The music is suitably laidback alternative rock and pop, but with philosophical depth, punctuated by turns of phrase like “Frenzy or friendzoned” on “Don’t Call Me Your Brother.” The magical “Phantom Baby” drifts on a dreamy, crooned refrain as JBABE is carried on a fellow soldier’s shoulders through enemy crossfire.
JBABE says he could have just created a run-of-the-mill music video that speaks to themes of romance, breaking up and the like, but he wanted to “explore another, deeper aspect of love.” He explains, “I think there’s a love for brother that runs deeper than women, sometimes. Even ‘Phantom Baby’ starts with, ‘Happy birthday, lover boy.’ It’s so open like that. I think one of the biggest forms of camaraderie is found in the military, where you die with your brothers, or you live with them. So we try to portray that.”
Where he’s smashed things and shaved the hair off a woman for previous music videos like “Punch Me In My Third Eye,” there’s no dearth of ambition with this project either. Even before the short film for the album came together, there was a music video for the album’s closing song “Fela Kuti.” The song was inspired by all the times he spent listening to the Afro music legend with his Nigerian friend (whose mother was part of Kuti’s traveling choir) and hearing “how he would hunt for gorilla meat.”
The music video — for which JBABE was working with Lendrick Kumar — was filmed on an island in Tamil Nadu with surfers, local fishermen and the artist out on the water. “I spent 80 grand and we bought fireworks to go off from the island, and it was one long shot. We played the song, and Lendrick recorded this like a kilometer away, zoomed in, but the camera ran out of space and conked off soon after the fireworks went off,” he says. This was seven years ago, and JBABE recalls incredulously how the island “no longer exists.” The video, however, is going to see the light of day. “I just need someone to color grade it, man,” he says with a laugh.
In a predicament many independent artists will recognize, JBABE is in financial debt after making A Little Larger Than the Universe, but it’s worth it in different ways. “Money will always come and go, but when you make something with your brothers, it’s kind of beautiful. It lasts forever, just like the voice note of your mom, or a piece of visual work, you know? It’s not for the likes, it’s just a win,” he says.
The visual work is a Tanjore art-style painting of JBABE posing, complete with a flower crown, a cross across his neck and a black glove in view. It was commissioned by JBABE based on a photoshoot, and he got his mother to handwrite the album title. “It’s just a weird frame of me. I don’t know what to do with it. Yeah, maybe someday auction it…” he trails off. Maybe it could make it to a museum? “Maybe,” he says with a laugh.
JBABE’s mother also appears on the track “Psalms 5,” through a voice note she recorded, reading the hymn from the Bible. “God forbid you send a voice note to an artist, you know you’re going to make it to an album,” the artist says wryly. “I think keeping my mom’s voice in there instead of, like, a tantrum from an ex, was a lot more fulfilling,” he adds.
In a larger sense, he’s happy that she can “in some small way, live forever on a piece of art” he’s made. While playing the album to his brother, when “Psalms 5” came on, JBABE says his brother teared up as he identified his mother’s voice.
There’s a faith and hope that permeates through the nine-track album. He admits his spirituality and sense of faith in the past was, at best, “aesthetic” and more imagery-driven than any deeper belief. “But I guess time, mortality comes to all men, and I think the Lord sought me out. I feel like some songs were received rather than made, you know?” JBABE says, pointing to songs like “See You In Heaven” (in which his falsetto sings with clarity, “I’m ready to go home now,” and invokes Mother Mary) and the tired but hopeful “Days I Will Endure.” The latter was written during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, when stories of self-preservation and enduring suffering were widespread. “There’s a verse in that song where it says, ‘Brother, are you home? I’ve been knocking at your door/You shall suffer never more/Love, ever more.’ I was like, ‘Who am I writing this for?’ It wasn’t for my brother, it was almost like it was coming through another realm of a sort,” he says.
A poignant record from an artist whose previous album was full of ironic humor and heartbreak songs, A Little Larger Than The Universe is JBABE extending and reestablishing his footing as a solo indie artist outside of his band. “This was just a bunch of stuff sitting in my closet. I just want to let it out. I’m so grateful the way this started taking, I never expected it. I still don’t expect it,” he says. There’s a four-city tour coming up to promote the album, with the first show on July 23rd at the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre in Mumbai, where JBABE will be joined by a children’s choir for a couple of songs. “I feel like there’s a lot of power in a child’s uncracked voice that adults don’t usually carry. I’ve had the band experience, so I want to try something new, like ‘What can I do without a band?’” If he was given a blank cheque, he even dreams out loud and says he would present the album in a play format for theater.
His focus will soon shift back to The F16s, though, with their new album All Dogs Go to Heaven set to release later this year. The band and he were clear that there shouldn’t be an “overall of ideas, sound and image” between the projects. “There’s about 20 songs coming up from my face this year, so there’s a lot of music. Rightfully so, we’ve been silent for both, for almost three to four years,” he says with a laugh.