Mouth Dreams

Mouth Dreams
Mixtape by Neil Cicierega
Released	September 30, 2020[1]
Recorded	2019–2020
Genre	Mashup[1] remix
Length	1:01:07
Neil Cicierega chronology
Mouth Moods (2017) Mouth Dreams (2020)

Mouth Dreams is the fourth mashup album by American musician and comedian Neil Cicierega.^[2] It was released on September 30, 2020. Like his three previous mashup albums (Mouth Sounds, Mouth Silence, and Mouth Moods), its source material is primarily Top 40 hits from the late 20th and early 21st centuries, but this time with an emphasis on songs about sleeping and dreams. It marks the musician's first major album release since 2017.^[3]

Background[]

A spectrogram of "Mouth Dreams (Extro)"

Like his previous mashup albums Mouth Sounds, Mouth Silence, and Mouth Moods, its source material is primarily Top 40 hits from the late 20th and early 21st centuries; he also sampled classical music from the 19th century ("Brithoven" and "Ain't").^[1] However, unlike previous albums, Cicierega uses samples from a wider variety of time periods, such as pre-1960s pop music including Dean Martin's "That's Amore" (1953) in "Aammoorree"^[4] and Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse" (1937) in "Whitehouse;"^[5] and where Smash Mouth is usually featured either directly or indirectly with the previous albums (hence the "Mouth" series), Smash Mouth's "All Star" is only featured in one song: "Mouth Dreams (Extro)".

Like in Mouth Silence, there is a secret message hidden in the track info for Mouth Dreams. Each track contains a one-letter comment; when the tracks are arranged in reverse alphabetical order by title, the comments spell "I can't think of a secret message."

In addition, the album's cover art hides several secrets. Two Wingding characters are hidden within each of Cicierega's pupils when the image is brightened; these wingdings stand for the English letters "M" and "D", referring to the album's title "Mouth Dreams." Ewoks can be faintly seen reflected in Cicierega's glasses, referencing the track "Limp Wicket" featuring samples from Meco's "Ewok Celebration." The letters that feature sparkles beside them in Cicierega's name and in the title spell out, in order, "NiCe MoDems", referencing the final track of the album, "Ain't", which concludes with a clip of a dial-up modem. This is possibly a reference to a coincidental quirk in the title of the 2007 video game, Super Mario Galaxy, which later became an internet meme, where the letters featuring sparkles in the game's logo spell out "U R MR GAY".

Reception[]

Critical reception of the album was positive. In a positive review, Joseph Earp of Junkee called Mouth Dreams Cicierega's "new masterpiece" and "heinous and beautiful in the same measure." He also claimed it "might be even better" than Cicierega's past mashup albums and called it "his wildest work yet."^[6] The A.V. Club also praised the album, calling it "so stupid, and so good."^[3]

Track listing[]

References[]

External links[]

• Official website
• Mouth Dreams on Internet Archive