We’ve shed a few words a couple of times before on Ear Pwr, and none of us foresaw the group questioning existence in a music video. We figured the band for a more pedestrian outfit. When you name a track “Cats is People, Too”…
But what’s that? The video includes a man dressed as a zebra and puppets? Wait, that sounds a bit more like Ear Pwr. With the help of Showbeast, factor in that there are more non sequiturs in the “Super Animal Bros. III” video than a season of Family Guy, and you have a recipe for fascinating theatre. (Although, if you watch closely, nearly every gag is tied into the existential.) Is it a train wreck that bids your eyes to participate or a work of staggering genius? We’re going with genius.
Showbeast is the collective creativity of Benjamin Franklin Beast and Erin Gleeson. The two met in college while working on degrees in Video Art and Narrative Filmmaking (respectively). Somewhere along the line puppets got involved, and well, the stuff they’re doing now is the Muppet version of Homestar Runner in its kid-friendliness.
In true “Thriller” fashion, the “Super Animal Bros. III” video spends its first five minutes in exposition (that’d be the Showbeast part) before the music portion picks up. Two puppets bicker over whether one of them is “a figment of the other’s imagination”. How to solve the disagreement? The only logical way possible – with “the item”! The music finally kicks in, and dancing in front of a green screen with puppets never looked like so much fun!
And let’s not forget that the Showbeast blog has it that the show will be working with Dan Deacon soon. Nice.
