by Tom Gallo (@lookatmyrecords)
World’s Strongest Dog, the second album from New Jersey’s Long Neck, is a shot in the arm. The album sees the band diving into the depths of their souls, sifting through feelings of fear, loneliness, and self-doubt, only to resurface more powerful than before. This overarching theme is most apparent on the album’s final track, the dark sounding “Bad Words.” Today, the band has shared their first video from World’s Strongest Dog, and “Bad Words” provides the relatable and impactful soundtrack.
As a song that expounds on loneliness and isolation, the current global state of affairs injects new meaning into the deeply personal “Bad Words.” Though the song was written before the current pandemic, in the video, the band applies the song’s themes to the new collective normal that many are experiencing with a hopeful and inspiring message. The video centers on a computer screen, the primary form of communication for millions of people over the last three months - capturing the band chatting with each other, playing music, cooking, reading, and doing various other activities in isolation with the song’s lyrics interspersed in chat boxes throughout. In elaborating on the video, director Ruby Mastrodimos explained that she wanted to “capture how we attempt to maintain our relationships as they’re moved online and mitigated by screens.” The video does just that, highlighting these attempts to stay connected, but there’s also a ray of hope for the future at the end. The aforementioned video chats eventually transition to pictures of the band during happier times, with shots of them hanging out while on tour, laughing together, and doing something many bands wish they could be doing right now - playing shows.