Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Sturgill Simpson Presents: Sound and Fury’ on Netflix, an Insane Bit of Post-Apocalyptic Anime Set to Post-Country Music

Netflix’s Sturgill Simpson Presents: Sound and Fury is an exercise in juxtaposition. The singer/songwriter who bristles at being branded the neo-savior of “outlaw” country music made a new record, Sound and Fury — which sounds like Jackson Maine tripping 1.375 balls down the rabbit hole — and set it to an anime “video album” rife with decapitations, evil-grinning executive suits and Mad Max hellscapes. Anybody game for this? Sure? Why not?

STURGILL SIMPSON: SOUND AND FURY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Well, there’s this muscle car. I think it’s a Chevelle or some type of General Motors product. It drives through a crater-pocked landscape to a city called Hope. It’s pretty much empty. Some missiles launch and explode. This all is soundtracked by a lengthy instrumental that one usually wouldn’t associate with a budding superstar with a flannel shirt, a slight twang and a white guy in a cowboy hat opening up for him on an arena tour.

There’s a totally ripped cowboy blacksmith hammering away to the beat of the next song. A kabuki Joker-type blows the heads off some monks. The muscle car, we at last learn, is driven by a samurai-type in a helmet, gas mask and big, flowy chaps. A couple more evil kabuki-masked creeps are introduced: one is in a nicely tailored top-floor-executive suit, the other is a bloated hunk of shirtless flab who looks like Mojo from X-Men fused with Immortan Joe.

Eventually, the samurai’s face is revealed: she’s a she! She leads Immortan Mojo’s minions — blindfolded topless kabuki warrior women, blindfolded totally ripped blond bikini ladies and totally ripped triangular-torso’ed Speedo dudes in S&M hoods — in a nicely choreographed line dancing routine with, if I’m not mistaken, integrated tai chi or martial arts moves. The sequence is set to a totally warped Simpson disco track that’ll hopefully make Miller Lite-swillin’ country bros feel uncomfortable in the area just south of their DON’T TREAD ON ME belt buckles.

This is the first 12 minutes of Sound and Fury. The rest is nearly as wild and audacious: A skateboarder in a radiation suit cruising a deserted city. Surrealistic stills and impressionistic abstract imagery and photo-realistic collages. A first-person viewpoint of a city being nuked. Cyborg unicyclists. All of it in different visual styles and shades of insanity. You know, the typical country-rock video you’d see on CMT.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Mad Max: Fury Road meets WALL-E meets Cowboy Bebop meets, um, A Star is Born?

Performance Worth Watching: Did I mention the cyborg unicyclists have the unicycles built in to their bodies? And that they dance? Bartender, I’ll have whatever the person who animated them is having.

Memorable Dialogue: You want me to quote a song lyric? OK, I’ll quote a song lyric: “It’s f—- all y’all season,” Simpson sings, which one could interpret as a description of the nuke-everything scene it accompanies, or the singer/songwriter’s response to anyone who’s going to question what a “country” guy is doing making a hyperviolent anime film to go with his new beefy, experimental rock record.

Sex and Skin: Anyone turned on by topless blindfolded kabuki warrior women line dancers in pasties? Yeah, I don’t know either.

Our Take: Here’s where I attempt to make sense of all this: (Scratches head) (Skims Twitter) (Flips through notes) (Sips coffee) (Sips coffee) (Sips coffee) (Gets more coffee) I don’t think we’re supposed to make sense of all this.

Oh, there’s Political Commentary here tying together some of these fascinatingly disparate and visually creative vignettes — not surprising considering Simpson surely honked off some of his potential fanbase by being vocally anti-Trump and pro-gun-control. A sign for the city of Hope labels it a “sanctuary city,” and it’s basically unpopulated. A character crawls into the dumpster where they live, and it’s decorated by a “guns don’t kill people” sign. The bad guy in a suit could be a CEO, a CEO, or a CEO, take your pick. It’s clear this is a post-Americapocalypse where diverse heroes battle faceless stooges, and it all seems pretty deliberate, and fueled by some righteous, confrontational rage and fury.

Our Call: STREAM IT. You can’t say it’s dull.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Sturgill Simpson Presents: Sound and Fury on Netflix