JBABE, the stage name of Goa-based songwriter Josh Fernandez, released his second album, A Little Larger Than The Entire Universe, on 10 June 2026, and four months later its opening song is still on two of Spotify's Indian editorial playlists. In our snapshot at 11:25 PM IST on 16 October 2026, Cries in Crocodile was No. 58 of 75 on RADAR India and No. 65 of 75 on Indie India.

It is a strange record to find on those lists. It is in English, it runs 25 minutes, and it is more interested in God and in brotherhood than in romance. It is also the first JBABE album in almost seven years. I think it is the bravest thing he has made and not quite a finished one, and I'll try to explain both halves of that.

A note on how I heard it. This review is built on Apple Music's 30-second previews of all nine songs, the release credits, and what Fernandez has said in interviews. Where I describe a sound, I tie it to those preview windows.

JBABE's second album at a glance

  • Artist: JBABE (also written JBabe or Jbabe in the press), the solo project of Josh Fernandez, credited as Joshua Fernandez; vocalist and guitarist of the Chennai band The F16s (Rolling Stone India, 2021 and 2026); @joshurbanned on Instagram, @JBABEMusic on YouTube
  • Album: A Little Larger Than The Entire Universe, nine songs, 25 min 41 sec on Spotify, released 10 June 2026; ℗ and © 2026 JBABE on Spotify, ℗ 2026 JBABE on Apple Music
  • Credits: the short film's YouTube description says the album was "Written, composed and performed by Joshua Fernandez (JBABE)"; the YouTube Topic releases list JBABE or Joshua Fernandez as composer and lyricist
  • Singles before the album: Phantom Baby (18 April 2026), Don't Call Me Your Brother (30 April 2026) and Days I Will Endure (21 May 2026), all ℗ 2026 JBABE on Apple Music
  • Previous album: Play The Piano Drunk Like A Percussion Instrument Until The Fingers Begin To Bleed A Bit, seven songs, 18 October 2019, ℗ 2019 JBABE
  • Playlists at our 11:25 PM IST capture on 16 October 2026: Cries in Crocodile at No. 58 on RADAR India and No. 65 on Indie India

From Bukowski to the Psalms

The first JBABE album took its title from a Charles Bukowski poetry book. "The fact that Bukowski celebrates us, desperate degenerates, and indicts bourgeois society, makes us best friends," Fernandez told The New Indian Express in October 2019, when the paper described the record as lo-fi and bedroom pop. His most-played songs on Spotify still come from that era: Guyver showed 618,520 plays and I'll Get the Cheque, We Can Split the Regret showed 385,802 when we checked at about 11:28 PM IST tonight.

The new title is borrowed too, this time from a volume of Fernando Pessoa's poetry, according to Indulge Express. What changed is the subject. "I know my last album was trying to fill a God-shaped hole with applause, awards and fleeting romance," he told the paper's Anika Gomez in May. Speaking to Rolling Stone India's Anurag Tagat in July, he said some of these songs "were received rather than made".

I came to this expecting the faith to be a costume, because his old records loved a costume. It isn't, or at least it doesn't sound like one. The sincerity is the point of the record, and it is also where the record is strongest.

What the previews tell you

Fernandez told Indulge Express he missed guitars in pop: "It feels a little too clean without them. So, I made a mess with loads of guitars, orchestral strings, and a Juno." You can hear the mess arrive in Apple's preview of Cries in Crocodile. His voice is there from the first second, and for eleven seconds the level stays steady. Just short of the twelve-second mark the whole thing jumps sharply in volume and stays up there to the end of the clip.

Don't Call Me Your Brother does the same trick. The first ten seconds of its preview are quiet, then the song lurches forward at about eleven seconds. See You In Heaven waits only three seconds before it lifts. When a record keeps holding its breath and then shouting, you either find it tiresome or you start waiting for the moment. I started waiting for it.

The songs that don't do this are the ones I'm less sure about. Ever-illuminating has the quietest preview of the nine and never really rises. That song is older than the album; Fernandez performed it for the Maed in India series in June 2022, and the episode notes say he once lost its demo "on a Valentine's Day date gone awry". It fits what he told Rolling Stone India about the album: "This was just a bunch of stuff sitting in my closet."

Psalms 5, and his mother's voice

The track I keep returning to is the shortest one. Psalms 5 runs 1:22. Fernandez told Indulge Express that his mother, out of the blue, sent him a voice note of her singing a psalm, and that he "just drizzled some harmonies and a singular cello string to retain its fragility". His parents, he said in the same interview, played in a jazz band together. The album title on the cover is in her handwriting.

Apple's preview opens on about a second of near-silence before her voice comes in, and what you hear is the morning-prayer passage of Psalm 5, with nothing dressed up around it. On an album whose film has its maker set himself on fire, this is the moment that feels the most private. Rolling Stone India reported that his brother teared up when he recognised her voice. I believe it.

The interviews suggest Days I Will Endure, written at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, comes from the same place. Fernandez quoted its verse to Rolling Stone India: "Brother, are you home? I've been knocking at your door/You shall suffer never more/Love, ever more." The brotherhood idea runs through the film too; he told the magazine he wanted to "explore another, deeper aspect of love" and pointed to the military, "where you die with your brothers, or you live with them".

Where the old jokes still get in

Not all of it sits comfortably. Rolling Stone India picked out the line "Frenzy or friendzoned" on Don't Call Me Your Brother, and it is the kind of wordplay that made the first album fun. Here, a few songs away from a psalm and a song that invokes Mother Mary, it can sound like someone cracking a joke at a prayer meeting. Sometimes that friction is the most human thing on the record. Sometimes it just breaks the spell.

The bigger problem is length. Homegrown's Avani Adiga wrote that he set out to make "a mammoth of an album" and that it embraces scale at a time when playlists reward brevity. I don't hear a mammoth. Four of the nine songs are under two and a half minutes. Do I Bore You?, at 1:57, holds one level for almost all of its preview, never lifting, and it comes across less like a song than a passing thought. A couple of these feel like sketches that the arrangements make sound bigger than they are. That might suit the 30-second rule we wrote about in our piece on Indian indie song length, but it leaves an album named for the size of the universe feeling about the size of a long EP.

Phantom Baby is the exception, and the best argument for the record. Rolling Stone India said it "drifts on a dreamy, crooned refrain". Its preview lifts too, after a brief drop at about twelve seconds, but by less, and it doesn't feel like a trick. It opens, according to Fernandez, with "Happy birthday, lover boy". It is the song where the old JBABE and the new one sound like the same person.

The film, the debt and the numbers

Much of the album's ambition lives off the record. The short film, directed by his longtime collaborator Lendrick Kumar, went up on his YouTube channel on 10 June 2026 and runs 10:55. In it Fernandez sets himself alight during Days I Will Endure; Rolling Stone India reported "mild burns" and Homegrown first-degree burns. It showed 1,494 views when we checked tonight. Rolling Stone India also reported that he is in financial debt after making the album.

The streaming picture is mixed. Cries in Crocodile showed 209,169 plays on Spotify tonight, well ahead of Phantom Baby (72,305) and Don't Call Me Your Brother (62,085). In July Rolling Stone India wrote that he had crossed the 100,000 listeners mark on Spotify; his artist page showed 24,537 monthly listeners at our check. Playlist placement explains some of the gap between one song and the rest. For how much power those slots carry, see our piece on Spotify's Indian indie gatekeepers.

He is releasing this himself. Both albums and all three 2026 singles carry ℗ JBABE on Apple Music. The exceptions we found are older or shared: the video for his 2021 single Punch Me In My Third Eye credits Circle of Love Records, and his 2024 feature on Dohnraj's Gods & Lowlifes is ℗ Indimints Records. That puts him in the position we described in our guide to releasing music without a record label, with a film budget on top. It also makes an English-language album on these lists rarer than it ought to be; our look at Indian indie languages found only eight songs that JioSaavn tagged English on Fresh Finds India.

He told Indulge Express that taking his time "will habitually alienate a lot of my fans". On the evidence of the previews, the record is worth some alienation. Psalms 5 and Phantom Baby are the best things I have heard from him. I'd still rather the next one had fewer sketches and more songs that wait twelve seconds and then go somewhere. Rolling Stone India says the next album from The F16s, All Dogs Go to Heaven, is due later this year, and Spotify lists a JBABE show on 5 December at Onegolf Brewery in Vattinagulapalle.

FAQ

Who is JBABE?

JBABE is the solo project of Josh Fernandez (credited as Joshua Fernandez), a singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who is also the vocalist and guitarist of the Chennai band The F16s. Rolling Stone India reported in July 2026 that he had moved to Goa from Chennai.

When was A Little Larger Than The Entire Universe released?

It was released on 10 June 2026. It has nine songs and runs 25 min 41 sec on Spotify. Phantom Baby, Don't Call Me Your Brother and Days I Will Endure came out as singles in April and May 2026.

Who wrote and produced the album?

The short film's YouTube description credits Joshua Fernandez (JBABE) with writing, composing and performing it, and Homegrown reported it was entirely written, composed and produced by him. The recordings are ℗ 2026 JBABE.

What is Psalms 5 on the JBABE album?

A 1:22 track built on a voice note of Fernandez's mother singing a psalm, with harmonies and a single cello line added, according to his Indulge Express interview.

Is Cries in Crocodile on Spotify's RADAR India playlist?

Yes. At our 11:25 PM IST capture on 16 October 2026 it was No. 58 on RADAR India and No. 65 on Indie India. Positions change often.

Sources

Cover: JBABE (Josh Fernandez) dressed in black with a white cap and large white feathered wings, standing in a circle of light, from the press photo published by Rolling Stone India (photo: Shantanu Krishnan; design: Kiran Valentine); cropped to 1200×630 by discography.in. Source: https://rollingstoneindia.com/jbabe-new-album-interview-a-little-larger-than-the-universe/.

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