Bad Luck is a band from Brooklyn by way of Florida by way of Long Island, so it’s hard to nail which of these three insanely different hotbeds of indie-rock has had the heaviest hand in shaping their sound. The vocals are brash and explosive in a way that brings the deeply personal storytelling of their lyricism to life, but goddamn, this band knows how to write a wicked pop song. This is evident throughout the whole of their Drug Phase EP, which was released last March on Take This To Heart Records, but this really shines through on the track “Mean Dudes.”
And, no, I swear I’m not just saying that because I’m excitedly sharing the music video for that song with y’all today. On “Mean Dudes,” we’ve got that storytelling and a more scaled back version of those gritty vocals working in tandem with guitars that sound inspired more so by the likes of The Smiths and The Cure than their peers. The music itself is vibrant and bouncy, which allows for that perfectly constructed pop-song chorus to flourish.
The music video for “Mean Dudes” is a study on cyclical living. The journey that we’re taken on begins where it ends and carries us through kaleidoscopic views of drug-fueled days that seem fun at first, but quickly become nothing more than the motions. You learn to trudge through it because it feels normal, not because it’s something you want to do. This comes to a head when we get to the third and final verse, which reads “I don’t wanna drink like you/Fuck you, see who really thinks it isn’t cool/That will be my thing to get away from you/’Cause I’m good, shit” and the video offers a brief moment of realization and escape, only to pan back to the same front door we came through at the start.
“Mean Dudes” comes from Bad Luck’s Drug Phase EP, which is out now on the always incredible Take This To Heart Records. You can catch the band on a southeast tour of the US this Summer starting August 6th. More information on that can be found below.
