Neil Cicirega: Mouth Moods ALBUM REVIEW

The internet can be a pretty magical place sometimes. Anyone who has spent as much time on various music and meme sites as me would know, that the world of music and the internet have led to some truly wacky and wonderful fusions. These fusions often involving smashing obscure or underground music with super popular music to create a completely new track, or as is the case with Neil Cicirega, the incredibly talented and multifaceted master of his craft; take two (or more) extremely popular tracks, for instance, "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin and TLC's "No Scrubs" and  mash them together seamlessly.

Neil has been doing his mash-up music thing for a few years now, and in fact, his last two mash-up albums, Mouth Sounds and Mouth Silence are still some of the best, most enjoyable releases in the entire sub-genre. However, with the third album completing the Mouth trilogy, Mouth Moods is in many ways a superior album overall.

Now I know what you're thinking, why am I reviewing an album that is essentially a bunch of other songs mixed together with some internet jokes mixed in? Simply put, it is the most fun I've had with music since the other two Mouth albums. These mash-ups are so eye-opening in the way they either find commonalities between two pieces of popular music, or how certain tracks, despite their differences, can be shaped to make something completely different. And I can't forget tracks like "The Starting Line" which is literally the opening seconds of nearly a dozen tracks, all mashed together to make a new song.

On this album, Neil always seems to find some new way to blend disparate parts together, and unlike the last two albums, the results here are almost universally excellent, whereas on the other two releases, there were way more bits of filler. And while this album isn't completely devoid of that (I don't care that your computer has 300MB of hard-drive space!) it definitely has more in the way of fully-fleshed songs.

I won't go into extreme detail about all the tracks I loved because that would take forever (and ruin the surprise), but just know that if you're looking for something different and happen to enjoy popular music, this album has the potential to be the most fun you'll have with music all year.

8.7/10