Gollylagging Share "Red Fish" Video Ahead of Real Life

Boston’s Gollylagging have shared “Red Fish,” a quick, loud, deliberately silly rock song about the pressure to seem cool, along with a homemade video that takes its cues from the scrappy clips of the early internet.

The quartet of Jake Regulbuto (vocals, guitar), Jules Skiffington (vocals, guitar), Andrew Garas (drums), and Joey Lorant (bass) has spent the last several years working through bars, DIY rooms, and opening slots around New England. Along the way they put out a run of singles, the split EP fauna with fellow Boston bands going222jail and Dino Gala, and the follow-up Dry Rot. Their earlier songs leaned toward emo. The newer material keeps the weight and the fuzz while moving away from that sound, and Boston culture site Vanyaland heard “a bedrock of post-hardcore” under the recent single “Bronco.”

“Red Fish” came together fast. “This whole song came to me pretty quickly, I sat down and wrote it all at once,” Regulbuto says in the band’s announcement. He and Lorant made a demo, then brought it to Skiffington, who wrote the drum break and the guitar solo. The subject is a stretch of Regulbuto’s life when he felt awkward in a lot of social situations and noticed how much effort people put into being cool. He calls the song “a silly, sarcastic response to people like that,” and says the goal was simple: “I wanted the song to sound fun and also to rock.”

Lorant directed and edited the video himself. He points to the Pharcyde, Beastie Boys, and Lonely Island as reference points, and says he was after “that jumpy, jittery, inelegant look.” The rough edges suit the song. A band making its own video on a small scale can still land a clear idea, and this one knows exactly what it’s going for.

“Red Fish” is the third track on Real Life, the band’s debut album, out October 16 via Disposable America. The ten songs mark a shift in how Gollylagging work. Every member contributes on at least one track, and Regulbuto splits lead vocals with Skiffington for the first time. Most of the record sits in heavier territory than this single. Regulbuto describes it as being about “feeling dissatisfied with where you are in your life and trying to reach a place of acceptance with that.” Skiffington’s “Comet,” an earlier single, works through the end of a long friendship, and “Jackknife” looks at the same kind of falling out from a harder angle.

The label is a natural home for the band. Disposable America has been part of the New England scene for close to fifteen years. It began as a cassette label for local Boston projects, put out early records by Horse Jumper of Love and Soft Blue Shimmer, and is still run by its founder, Dustin J. S. Watson, with a steady focus on the community around it.

That community thread runs through Real Life, and “Red Fish” is the album’s lightest moment. It’s a song about not taking yourself too seriously, made by four people who clearly enjoy playing together.