by Conor Lochrie (@conornoconnor)
There’s a famous sign in Portland, Oregon, that declares, “Keep Portland Weird.” With people like musician Mo Troper around, this statement will never be in doubt. The prolific songwriter loves a power pop ditty or twelve, and he doesn’t care how esoteric or bizarre their contents are. Everything about Troper’s style is designed to deceive and confound; it’s difficult to take what he sings about at face value but, in all honesty, that’s where the fun lies. Consider that he named his latest album Dilettante, a word which means, “A person with an amateur interest in the arts without real knowledge.” Troper knows this isn’t the case; the listener realizes this about him after listening too, but that’s not the point. He just never wants to get too big for his boots.
He’d be forgiven for being cocky such is the level of consistency in Dilettante. Over a massive 28 songs, his strike rate is strong, with most pieces landing with precision and hilarity. The key to a good power pop song has always been its brevity and Troper clearly knows this deeply. Songs are kept brief and to the point, the emphasis on playfulness and silliness, and lord, how those two feelings abound.
There’s a rejected jingle for Reese’s Pieces (Rejected Jingle); there’s a ‘sincere’ apology to a kid for ruining his 9th birthday party (Caleb); there’s a love letter to Troper’s parrot (‘My Parrot’). This is the thing: I still don’t know whether to believe if Troper genuinely has a parrot; he probably doesn't. Again, that’s not the point. Like Syd Barrett or, more recently, Connan Mockasin, his passion is primarily for the weird and the wacky. The listener is a plaything to be toyed with, to be coaxed into reacting.
So whenever Troper sings what appears to be an ode to love, as on ‘X-Ray Vision,’ ‘Better Than Nothing,’ or ‘I Would Dance With You,’ you never know if he’s being serious. He makes sure to undercut ‘X-Ray Vision’ with the ridiculously-titled ‘Cum on My Khakis’; “I’m not the best you’ve ever had / But at least it’s not all bad” and “I would dance with you / If I knew how...It’s just that I can’t tell the 2 step from a pebble in my shoe,” he sings in those other two songs, anchoring his notions of love to simplicity and realism.
Troper can be prone to simmering frustration though, which is when his true colors perhaps rise to the surface. Lead single ‘The Expendables Ride Again’ sees him bitching about old friends and bandmates, while the wry hipness of ‘All My Friends Are Venmo’ is a strong surmising of the current state of the music industry (“I’ve had it up to here so I’m saying fuck the fans (what fans? What fans?)”). He also proves himself capable of flirting between frenetic power playing and more melodic pop throughout Dilettante. Sometimes he lets the track dissolve into fuzziness, sometimes he prefers to find a winning groove and fire his comical words over the top of them. Both modes work, depending on what’s required.
Silly humor and incessant energy: sometimes that’s all you need to make a great record. Troper played everything on Dilettante and recorded it in about a week which means its rackety and ramshackled but in a pleasing sense. From the man who recorded a track-by-track remake of The Beatles album Revolver earlier this year, the individualistic weirdness should only be expected to continue and continue. “Sugar and cream as silly as it seems...Sugar and cream, they’re like Mac n Cheese,” he sings on ‘Sugar and Cream’. They’re blatantly not but that doesn’t matter. Trooper revels in the supremely silly and his music is better for it.