After five years of bouncing around Boston’s local scene, Gollylagging will drop their debut album this week. Real Life takes listeners back to the reign of LVL UP within the equivalent East Coast DIY scene of the previous decade by way of the slacker-grunge riffage of The Blue Album—it’s the type of album that doesn’t take itself too seriously only because the figures who created it clearly needed an outlet for this sort of goof-off behavior in a world that feels increasingly hostile to art for art’s sake, goofing off for goofing off’s sake. Hence the band name.
While Gollylagging’s musical influences leave plenty of breadcrumbs for the listeners to make their own projections, we checked in with all four members to get a sense of what types of inspiration they drew from outside of their songwriting heroes. Given that the record’s thematic through line reflects a certain dissatisfaction with the surreality of postmodern existence, it’s perhaps no wonder that Don DeLillo’s most prophetic novel comes up, nor that there’s mention of a photographer whose whole deal is turning the mundanity of everyday life into art. Energy drinks get a shoutout; somewhat relatedly, John Wilson does, too.
With the record out tomorrow via Disposable America, check out all of the band’s picks below. You can also pre-order Real Life here.
JULES SKIFFINGTON
Killer7 by SUDA51
I’d recommend Killer7 if someone told me they wanted to play a really cool video game. It came out in 2005, and I picked up the PC remaster 21 years later around when we were making the album. The main gameplay loop isn’t super compelling—in fact, I think it’s actually kind of annoying sometimes. It’s a rail shooter, so you can basically only move in one direction at a time. Then, when you have to shoot stuff, you switch to first-person and can’t move at all while aiming. The story is also really cryptic and convoluted, and I don’t think I fully understood it, but I loved it a lot. The concepts and mechanics and art all have so much swag, it just made me wanna keep digging deeper. It obfuscates itself in a way that makes you want to understand it. I do like making simple and to-the-point songs sometimes, but I like making songs like that, too—or at least songs that try to do that. There always has to be a layer of obscurity for any art to be artistic, and this made me think about how cluttered and dense that layer can be.
Energy drinks
I like trying the new Red Bull flavors when they come out. I had a little stint with Monster, too, when I was working blue collar. I do Alanis, I’ve done a C4 and got the chafes from the beta-alanine; hell, man, I’ve even done some Celsius here and there. But I don’t know if I really like them. They all just kind of taste like batteries. Life can be so mundane, so isolating. The desperate need for some sort of monoculture—the gray-walled void it’s left in our society—only to be Eternal-Sunshined from our memories like a fading dream. But we have gas stations with Red Bulls inside them. With the seasonal releases of new Red Bull flavors, we are provided with a weak flame to huddle around. What obscure fruits are they going to pick? What colors do they have left to choose from when they make the cans? These are conversations you can have with people. Me and Andrew are deep into it. One time he got me the new Cherry Sakura Spring edition before one of our recording sessions. It was OK. It wasn’t the Red Bull itself that mattered, it was what it represented.
JAKE REGULBUTO
Ernst Haas
He was an Austrian-American photographer who took dope pictures of regular stuff like cars and people in photo booths and such. Sometimes I write stuff that feels too mundane or simple, but he makes me think that’s cool.
Kevin Garnett
He was the coolest player on the Celtics when I found out what basketball was and they were the best team at the time. He really had that dog in him. He was king of the long two. He didn’t care that shooting threes was cooler—he was the long-two guy. It makes me feel like I can make the music that I want to make.
ANDREW GARAS
White Noise by Don DeLillo
I think that White Noise is the perfect summary of what it means to exist in “real life”—not only in 1985 when it was released, but in 2026, as well. I read the novel throughout the recording process and it felt like DeLillo was giving words to every feeling I’d ever had, but couldn’t describe. He gave words to what it feels like when the world is crumbling around us—which, in 2026, feels extremely prescient. As bleak as the book could be, it also gave me hope that we can still find joy in the things around us, a feeling I tried to channel on this record.
The hospitality industry
I’ve worked in a hotel ever since Gollylagging formed. Anyone who’s ever worked in the hospitality industry knows the constant grind and the toll it can take on you. The long hours, upset guests, and being on your feet all day can really add up after a while. While it’s difficult to balance playing music and working full-time at the hotel, it makes the band feel like something I need to do—an outlet to keep me sane. Having that allotted time to see friends, write music, and travel around has made all the long shifts worth it.
JOEY LORANT
How to with John Wilson
He’s a master at pointing out the obvious. His show is constructed around little moments that most people would look past, or steer away from completely. I love how he films everyday moments with a seemingly objective point of view, and then co-opts them to fit his own narrative. And it’s inspiring from a storytelling perspective; Watching his show makes you feel like you can make anything out of anything.
iPhone stickers
Using iPhone stickers for a reaction is a sickness that has slowly grown inside me over the last couple years. I used to just thumbs-up or whatever, but now I can throw fully-realized interpersonal memes into the mix. Baby pictures, music video stills, overly chill tax agents, blackout nights—all of these highly specific moments are frozen in time for us to exploit. Our group chat is tied together by stickers, black-heart emojis, and songs we love to hate. This is how it feels to make music together: It’s goofy, it’s fun, it’s out-of-nowhere, but it starts to make sense after a while.
