Neu Partybaby: “Call everyone you fucking love. This shit could stop at anytime.”

Few groups start out by attempting to write pop hits for Christina Aguilera. But there isn’t an awful lot about PARTYBABY’s early existence that seems especially normal. Noah Gersh and Jamie Schefman were getting sick and tired of doing music. Gersh used to be a member of Portugal. The Man, while Schefman had spent life as a producer and engineer, most notably on 30 Seconds to Mars’ past two records. They built themselves a “nice but shit little studio” in Los Angeles, and set about rediscovering enthusiasm for their day jobs.

“We’d both become pretty cynical. It’s a dicey thing to play music professionally, especially when it’s something that’s incredibly therapeutic. You run the risk of it turning into something that’s also causing you strife, and that’s what we’d reached,” says Gersh from his backyard. The potential Aguilera gig wasn’t a dream come true, or some genie in the bottle. “They put out feelers to five thousand musicians!” guesses Schefman, and his wild estimation probably isn’t far off. They “slaved away” at this draft track, to the point where they were climbing up the walls. Rage gave birth to ‘Your Old Man’, one of two balls-to-the-wall punk songs to PARTYBABY’s name. “Made up, on the spot. It was like ‘Ok cool - that’s our band,’” remembers Gersh.

“The disenchantment that we felt from that grind is what led to the start of the band,” confirms the afro-sporting Schefman.

Once PARTYBABY was set in motion, both members were intent in regaining their lust for life. “I wasn’t happy,” admits Gersh. “And the only reason for that was music. And that’s scary as fuck, because that’s how I know how to cope in the world. I was about to go to fucking culinary school or something. And then we started making this record, and thank god. I genuinely do believe that in one way or another, I’m going to be playing music for the rest of my life and that’s what I’m supposed to be doing. This project came along at literally the last moment it could have happened. And it kept me on that track.”