Neil Cicierega - Mouth Moods ALBUM REVIEW

ah the flannel it's the foil hi everyone and instead of LAN ello here the Internet's busiest music nerd and it's time for a review of this new Neil assist serega album mouse moods Neil is a content creator of many talents and and mediums but in the music world he is a singer he's a songwriter he's a multi-instrumentalist he's a producer he is a mash-up master this is one of his mashup projects he's coming through with yet another album of popular music collisions that I never thought were possible all of this broke out about three years or so ago Neil was turning heads with this meme that filled mashup record called mouths sounds which took a slightly more refined approach to a lot of the sound clown tracks you might catch on the sound cloud platform or on reddit where home producers regularly post these sonic torture chambers that string together clips lifted from smash mouth and bare naked ladies and Shrek and Death Grips Skrillex and migos and Will Smith the music from video games vaporwave kids cartoon shows and basically anything else that sounds inappropriate unnecessary annoying or hilarious and Neil was certainly down for all these memes to I mean after all this mouth sounds album is loaded with one sample after the next of Smash Mouth all-star there's even a Daft Punk revision on this thing topped with the lyrics to the band's hit song walking on the Sun the point I'm trying to make here is that this album wasn't just some assembly some mess of audacity edited nightmares Neil was putting together tracks that were silly but felt like songs had structure and could compete with the likes of some of the biggest and most notable mashup artists out there but with a distinct personality and a strong sense of humor Neil would then go on to release a prequel album - mouth sounds mouth silence which we at one time thought was a smashmouth free mashup album that saw neil bringing together the worlds of Kate Bush and Katy Perry Jimi Hendrix and Hanson and even Elton John and System of a Down and doing it fluidly and cohesively now there were moments on this album where it just sounded like two worlds were colliding that really never should have gotten together in the first place not only because the tone of the vocals don't really match the instrumental but also they might be slightly out of key or the chords don't quite match up most notably tracks like close to the Sun and sexual Lion King but mostly this album was a unique fusion of sounds that no other artists on the planet was taking quite this far or executing this skillfully now the missions set by the previous two albums here pretty much continues on mouth moods there's nothing conceptually different on this album for Neil but it sounds like he's refined his talents a little bit he's worked out the kinks and the result is his smoothest and most fluid and consistent album yet not only that but I think he's gotten better at making these very unlikely combinations sound eerily natural like these mashups were just meant to be whether its tracks like starting line or annoyed grunt where the song is more of a menagerie of a bunch of different clips single bars of tracks or pieces of vocals sort of assembled like a Frankenstein monster with spare pieces of cake and Montell Jordan and m.i.a and The Simpsons and Austin power and Smashing Pumpkins and disturbed and the home improvement theme song and then there are other songs where he's seamlessly assembling two tracks like a really intricate puzzle and it somehow sounds really good and while he's doing this I feel like Neil it advertently exposes just how many hidden similarities there are between some of our favorite and even least favorite tracks prime example the song floor corn which might have taken a lot of tedious editing but the final results a combination of hot butters popcorn song with drowning pools bodies hit the floor is nothing short of amazing breathtaking really because I can't stop laughing at the song too then there are other cups like dear dinosaur which is a really amazing fusion of the beetles dear Prudence with was not was walk the dinosaur the track that was a pretty huge meme on 4chan back in the day but you know it's still a really great funk song the final result is smooth it's funky its soulful more somber moment in the tracklist here is the song bustin which sees the vocals from TLC's no scrubs on top of the legendary guitar intro to Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven never in a million years what I thought that these things work together but somehow they do and it's kind of gorgeous meanwhile the song time is a combination of the time string sections of from Hans Zimmer off of the inception soundtrack and the village people's YMCA somehow putting the vocals on top of these powerful orchestral strings brings a hidden sadness to them that was probably not apparent to most listeners over the tracks original disco beat I found myself just like listening to this lawyer this audio so bad [Music] meanwhile the song the end does kind of the reverse for Linkin Park's in the end where the edginess and the sadness of the lyrics is singing from that song it's sort of taken off by a very funky Doobie Brothers instrumental which somehow also works like uh it's just smooth as butter and speaking of smooth that is the next track which is a marriage of the Barenaked Ladies one week with goddamn smooth criminal' not one of my favorite mashups on here because goddamn I hate that bare naked lady song I hate those vocals I hate that rapping I hate those lyrics so much one week is on my least favorite pop songs of that decade and of course Neil brings those vocals on again with the song stand by meme which is obviously a reference to the joke the fact that he is repeating the barenaked ladies song on to the next track but he's just putting it over to the standby me instrumental so I see the sense of humor seeping through there I get the joke I think it's funny in concept but what I'm actually listening - I'm like God I'm listening to the Barenaked Ladies no on the song tiger we get a combination of the eye of the tiger within excesses need you tonight the very funky sexy sleek pop rock instrumental there and the vocals are actually edited so that they're about a tiger the where tiger is constantly being inserted into the lyrics so that the song is a more about Tiger than it is the eye of the tiger or you know triumphant or competing or succeeding or advancing or whatever and what's funny is that this song is complete with loads of vocal samples from Frosted Flakes commercials so you got tony the tiger going great all over the track and i still can't believe the you spin me round' instrumental somehow fits underneath Oasis's Wonderwall of course with some very heavy pitch manipulation to make the choruses work but god damn is this an amazing remix and the song busting is a track that I loved hearing pop upon Neil's SoundCloud a few years ago it's an amazing centerpiece to the record and a great revision of the Ghostbusters theme song to be highly danceable and highly sexual as the word busting takes on an entirely different meaning that of course neil has to bring Smash Mouth back into the fold again with the song mouth pressure where we hear all-star with some pitch shifting placed on top of the under-pressure instrumental from Queen and David Bowie and at first it seems like kind of an inconspicuous combination like kind of a basic assembly of these two moments with a little editing of the instrumental though I will say that by the end of the track the driving and very rich guitars and pianos make the lyrics feel almost triumphant it's kind of like this song in a way is a real closer a bit of a victory lap here and an acknowledgment that what we're listening to here conceptually is like a real thing and it's fun and it's entertaining the final track is a bit of an anti-climax and I imagine that's kind of on purpose because really in all ways it's like the opposite closer to the song piss off of the mouth silence mashup album not only in the fact piss dichotomy you get it but also it's just so much more terrible of a track it's just a jock jam like it's just a jock jam instrumental with some Spice Girls samples and fred durst samples and Gwen Stefani samples the most glaring issue with this track is that Neil's fantastic sense of humor doesn't really pour through if you took this song and you brought it back in time to 2005 and played it to a club of pop music fans people would normally hear these songs on the radio they would most likely think this is like a really cool remix it just seems like a really tame moment on the album and while it may have been intentional it's still kind of disappointing as an ending though I do have to give this track some kudos on its lyrical editing where it seems like Neil is making some very subtle references to pooping and feces the act of pooping and hence the title and he also doesn't really interesting lyrical edits on the wow-wow song which is a an edit of wolf Smith's wild wild west where they're actually some pretty absurd lyrical edits where you have will now saying lyrics like you don't want to see you my hand where my hand being at and while I am complaining of the song 300 megabytes is really nothing more than an overextended interlude for me though I do think a lot of the vocal clips on the track are funny of the woman sort of ranting on not about how a computer with a 300 megabyte hard drive is like this new amazing like technological advancement which at the time I'm sure it was and then with the song a CVC this track is proof just rock-solid proof that Bryan Johnson's vocals should not be heard over anything else other than angus young's guitar because it really sort of balances out of his weird raspy squeaky voice which has nothing to compete with over the pumping strings and glittering pianos on lisa Loeb's stay though still i do stand in amazement of the fact that the vocals and instrumental here are assembled so well because melodically and rhythmically they really come together taking Neil's past mash of efforts into account I think a lot of my favorite mixes a lot of my favorite combinations from him do still sit on mouths silence but this is easily Neil's most consistently entertaining album most fluid project most accessible project I think most tasteful projects there are some amazing combinations on here like that Hans Zimmer and the Village People well there are some moments of conceptual genius like starting line having the starting lines to all of these other tracks layered on top of each other and it seems like Neal really paid attention to how these songs moved into one another because this really feels like a cohesive experience I love this record I think in time I'm going to warm up to it even more because there's just so much good material on here and I am blown away by Neal's fantastic effort on this thing as much of a joke or is Meany or is silly or is it served this album may seem there's an incredible amount of effort in detail going into this to make this album as entertaining as it is I'm feeling a strong 82 a light 9 on this thing your transition have you given this album a listen did you love it did you hate it what would you rate it you're the best you're the best which should I were you next hit the like if you liked please subscribe and hit one of the videos next to my head because there are some videos next matter you should check out okay cool all right make sure to you know give this album a shot to forever

Channel: theneedledrop

Views: 466,895

Rating: 4.8600388 out of 5

Keywords: album, review, music, reviews, indie, underground, new, latest, lyrics, full song, listen, track, concert, live, performance, update, the needle drop, anthony fantano, vlog, talk, discussion, music nerd, otherrvwz, loved, mashup, smash mouth, all star, potter puppet pals, comedy, satire, pop, meme, memes, acdc, barenaked ladies, beatles, ghostbusters, linkin park

Id: w_jO52l-8ok

Length: 12min 25sec (745 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 25 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/Opst3r]

shit is not a jockwhatever melon man, u wrong.

[u/georgeGraphy]

You guys realise that this album could possibly be on Fantano's list of best album of the year right?

[u/m00x]

Playlist with most of the songs used on this album