No question that we are living in uncertain times. The future does look bleak, but at least we’re going to have a ton of music that relates to our collective perspective on it. This is true with the song “Anti-Pop”, which was released by the Providence rockers VulGarrity via Dog Hill Records on April 19. While providing commentary on the current state of our society, the single is a groovy and rhythmic re-arrival of one of the best bands on the local music scene from over the past 20 years.

I recently had a talk with siblings Shawn and Tracy Garrity about how this song came together, a YouTube channel they’re both involved in, and a new album that’s on the way.

Rob Duguay: Tell me about the making of this new tune, was it all DIY, where you handled all the recording and producing along with the songwriting?

Shawn Garrity: We did all of it ourselves. We’ve been working on a new album for the past 10 years and “Anti-Pop” is one of the songs that’s going to be on it. It’s a culmination of efforts, but that one in particular along with most of the lyrics on the album were written during and after the pandemic. A lot of it was influenced by stuff we saw happening and what the pandemic did to the world and America, specifically.

RD: I definitely get that with the lyrics. Speaking of those lyrics, a major characteristic of the song that really caught me was how they’re delivered in a hip hop fashion over some funky bass lines and guitar riffs. What made you want to have that structure and go in that route when it came to the vocals?

SG: That’s a good question. It’s the only song on the album that has a rap in it, and I don’t know why (laughs). With the way we do our material, we typically write the music and then we listen to it afterwards while coming up with the lyrics. For whatever reason, when I listen back to that particular song, I heard a rap over it and that’s what came out of it.

RD: Very cool. As VulGarrity, you use looping as an integral part of your sound since the 2000s, which was a time when it wasn’t as popular of a technique as it is now. These days, artists and bands are doing something with looping either live or on a recording as a simple accompanying effect or they have their entire approach based off of it. As a band who started looping before it became really popular, what are your thoughts about its growth?

SG: It’s definitely blown up and what people have been doing with it nowadays is pretty phenomenal. There’s people who have really done some incredible things with it, but with this upcoming album, we’ve kind of steered away from it. We basically wrote the best songs we could possibly write and we didn’t take into account how they would be performed live. Given that, the instrumentation far exceeds what we did on our previous releases. It’s going to be a challenge to figure out how to perform these new songs live because there’s more parts involved than we’ve ever done before.

RD: Outside of the band, you both have been doing this YouTube channel called “Wow That’s Nutz” and it has a variety of content with comedic shorts and interviews with people, so what made you want to start this while having your own content hub?

Tracy Garrity: I’ve had my own channel since 2019. It’s all about narcissism. It grew and it’s almost up to 37,000 followers.

RD: Oh, wow.

TG: Yeah, I then approached Shawn with the idea of wanting to take it to another level. He’s really good at editing, so I was thinking of hiring him to do it, but the more I was thinking about it, I figured it would make more sense to have us just do something together. I wanted to have something else I’m doing that’s a little more positive rather than just talking about narcissistic people and what they do, so I approached Shawn about starting this channel. My first thought was that I don’t see many channels on YouTube that just talk about positive things or funny things, a lot of them that have blown up tend to talk about a lot of negative stuff. You don’t see too many where everything they’ve put out is positive or at least takes something negative and makes a positive spin off of it.

That’s when I came up with this idea, and when I approached Shawn about it around a year and a half ago, he jumped on board and thought it sounded awesome. That’s how it all started.

RD: I saw some of the videos on the channel and a lot of it is really funny. With this new album you’ve been working on, what does the future hold for it? Do you just plan on releasing some singles over the next few months until it’s officially unveiled?

SG: We have nine songs that we’re going to put on the album, so we’ll probably release another single or two within the next few months and then we’ll release the album at some point later in the year.