Atmosphere Wants ‘A Long Hello’ in New Video

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Atmosphere drops a slightly haunting new visual for “A Long Hello,” the closing song on their latest project, Fishing Blues. We’re still trying to make sense of the video, but you can reach your own conclusions by peeping it for yourself up top. Good luck!

In the new vid, we see Ant pull up at the beach as Slug gets out of the car and begins one long walk in the sand. For reasons unknown, he’s carrying a cardboard cutout. He raps out his verse and the video ends by taking the camera off him and focusing on the waves as they hit the shore.

The song itself seems to be a reflection on society’s tendency to romanticize tragedy more than it focuses on the moments where things just okay, if not great–ie, celebrating people who go to prison instead of people who’re married with kids. Slug describes this idea at length during his one verse on the song, and he uses the phrase “A long hello”–an inventive counter to “A long goodbye”– as a sort of metaphor for this idea.

“There’s far too many breakup songs/And there’s not enough songs about the moment we met,” Slug raps in the song’s opening bars. “A lot of words get spread, the pain, shame, and regret/And I’m not holdin’ my breath for any change to the sketch
I hope to death somebody can sing about/The countless times that we found a way to even out,” he continues.

Slug and Ant had a strong 2016, and they’ll look to continue their run when they continue their Freshwater Fly Fishermen tour in early January.

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