Making Music: Psychobaby

When your band includes a conservatory-trained violinist on lead guitar, a lead vocalist with an obsession for Carole King and jazz and members who formerly belonged to soft indie and screamo groups, you can only imagine the musical mélange brought to the table but also the possible difficulties of coming together harmoniously. Psychobaby, however, tackles this head-on and utilizes its diversityto their advantage in creating a unique sound.

“All of us are coming together from different musical backgrounds, and as a result, our sound synthesizes a lot of disparate influences,” lead vocalist and co-founder of the band Juliet Garrett ’15 said.

Psychobaby is currently comprised of five University students — Garrett, Godfrey Furchtgott ’16 on guitar, Stanley Mathabane ’17 who plays the keyboard as well as other auxiliary instruments, Ashwin Prasanna ’18 on drums and Josh Leifer ’17 on bass. The band as well as the unorthodox group name were the brainchild of Garrett and Furchtgott a year and a half ago.

“Juliet had a pretty large repertoire of songs she wrote herself between the ages of 15 and 18 and I wanted to play guitar in a band, which is something I hadn’t done up until that point, so it seemed like a natural fit,” Furchtgott said.

The group classifies themselves as ‘indie rock pop’ and incorporates synthesized and electronic sounds into their music alongside their live instruments and vocals.

Although the band describes its creative process as an expressive outlet that allows for freedom and collaboration among all of the members, they maintain that when it comes to actual performances, their joint focus is staying sincere in their music and appealing to their audience.

“We are not a jam band, we focused mostly on crafting these songs that are self-contained units—something you would listen to and enjoy," Mathabane said. "There is an emphasis on playing live and I think we are working on coming at the writing process with an ear towards the live show."

Just as varied and interesting as their musical stylings, the inspiration behind the lyrics for songs spring forth from a variety of different topics and emotions.

“We each have different bags that we tend to write from — love, loss and I think Godfrey writes a lot about post-adolescent disaffected youth— growing up and finding your place in the world,” Garrett said.

Psychobaby released its first extended play "Battlefield" in July, and are hoping to soon begin work on a music video. They have plans for upcoming gigs on the Lower East Side in New York, N.Y., at Arlene’s Grocery and in Washington D.C. at Black Cat in the spring. Despite being established for some time, members explained that they still find themselves exploring their sound to look outside of their current “poppy sound with rock instrumentation."

“We aren’t totally there, but we are almost there,” Garrett said. “We’re looking at more synth stuff, more groove stuff. We are getting dirtier, and that’s exciting.”