Shark Muscle
2020 · 10m · USA
Directed by Taylor Ervin
Genres: comedy, experimental, musical
Tones: absurdist, humorous, whimsical
Two musicians from NYC duo Tony or Tony drive to a New Jersey gig in an experimental musical odyssey of extreme close-ups, repeating dialogue, and interlude songs. It's a visual companion to the album of the same name.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A 10-minute film that *is* a music video but refuses to behave like one—looping dialogue as formal device, extreme close-ups as visual grammar, the whole thing betting that repetition and absurdist deadpan will do what a normal narrative arc couldn't touch. It's the kind of thing that makes you mad or makes you a believer, and I'm firmly in the latter camp.
Ervin's commitment to treating the interlude songs and looped dialogue as co-equal compositional elements shows real structural awareness; it's a film that knows exactly how it's sitting in the lineage of experimental music documentaries and visual albums, and executes that premise with disciplined visual restraint.
The decision to make extreme close-ups and repeating lines the *motif* rather than tics is what elevates this—a low-budget band-on-a-road-trip could've been limp, but those two formal choices lock it into something genuinely uncanny and memorable.
Reviews
A stylistically expressive voyage into the avant-garde carried by oddly catchy indie pop tunes and the naturally charismatic Tonys.