I was quite innocently minding my own business, scrolling through Twitter, when I suddenly spotted the familiar pouting face of internet prankster Neil Cicierega. My kneejerk reaction was to yell an unprintable word at my laptop screen, in a unique mixture of joy and frustration.

A bona fide pioneer of internet humour, Cicierega became an online mainstay long ago with his primitive and surreal animations; before Facebook; before YouTube; before the term ‘content creator’ had any meaning. After the later success of the Potter Puppet Pals shorts series, a swathe of albums under the name Lemon Demon, and countless other endeavours, Cicierega’s craft reached its apex with the release of his sadomasochistic masterpieces, Mouth Sounds and Mouth Silence, a two-part ‘remix’ collection of aural abominations involving earworms from the mire of pop history that was the mid 90s to early 2000s. The effect in the listener is the scrambling of pain and pleasure, for example, when it becomes clear that the pitch-shifted vocal track of Smash Mouth’s ‘All Star’ layered upon the instrumental version of ‘Imagine’ by John Lennon is not only sacrilegiously funny – it also inexplicably works perfectly.

Mouth Moods, the third instalment of Cicierega’s infernal project, is similarly woven from source material usually lifted from the fabric of recent pop culture – one-hit wonders, laughably angsty nu-metal tantrums, the theme tune from Home Improvement. Songs are comprised of mixed elements from disparate sources, such as the absurdly maximalist ‘Annoyed Grunt’, which utilises samples from The Simpsons, ‘Down with the Sickness’ by Disturbed, and the Super Mario series, to name only three. Other songs are more straightforwardly remixed using elements from a single source, such as ‘Bustin’’, a genuinely brilliant rearrangement of Ray Parker Jr’s theme to Ghostbusters. However, much of Mouth Mood’s listening value comes from the need to know just what cherished cultural artefact will be picked up next, and whether it will be ruined forever or not. What will Cicierega do to Vanessa Carlton’s only hit ‘1000 Miles’? The answer may infuriate or inspire, and that’s exactly how Cicierega keeps you coming back.

When Cicierega’s chimerical compositions aren’t busy purposefully and dedicatedly running jokes into the ground (the vocal line of Barenaked Ladies’ downright awful single ‘One Week’ appears at least three times on Mouth Moods), they frequently shine a light on something sublime, unearthing hidden beauty within the most novel of novelty songs. Try listening to his moving Hans Zimmer/The Village People mash-up without meditating on the injustice of homelessness.

Mad scientist Neil Cicierega is still, to paraphrase Dr. Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park, so preoccupied with whether or not he could that he didn’t stop and wonder whether he should. Did the world really need yet another gag with an ‘All Star’ punchline? Probably not. But God help me, I loved every minute of Mouth Moods, memes and all.

Video courtesy of: Neil Cicierega Music

Dafydd Jenkins
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