In the latest session of Rough Trade’s Shoplifting, they caught up with the Portland musician Mo Troper. Mo Troper’s latest album, Troper Sings Brion, is a tribute to demos by John Brion, which were never released officially. He chose to cover these demos as a way for Brion devotees to hear them in a new, fully fleshed out way, with his gleaming power-pop shining through on every song. This album follows the 2022 release of his fifth full-length album MTV, and diving further into home-recorded immediacy, it is a strikingly direct conduit to his world where heartbreak, hilarity, and hooks all go hand-in-hand.
During the session, Mo Troper talked through some of his favourite picks, including Lemonheads’ Come on Feel and Billy Joel’s Glass House. Troper claims it’s his favourite Lemonheads album, commenting that it’s one of those weird records from the CD era where it’s 50 minutes long which is top-loaded with the second half full of jokes and the bonus tracks comprising demos. With Glass House, Troper admitted that he sees Billy Joel as an artist with no identity, but who is a great pastiche artist.
The session also saw the unveiling of Mo Troper’s favourite vinyls, which included The Move’s album, Genesis, and Pickle Darling’s Laundromat. The Move was Jeff Lynne’s band pre-ELO, and they had many hits in the UK but never made it across the pond. Genesis’s early-era live bootleg was about Peter Gabriel’s theatrical element of dressing up in wild and crazy costumes. Finally, Pickle Darling’s album Laundromat suggests that Troper has spoken to the band about covering each other’s songs, and while only the singles have been heard, the album might be on his ‘to buy’ list soon.
Troper’s approach to producing music is clear: he treasures demos and bootlegs, as it allows him to dig deeper and connect with the original intention of his favourite artists. His choices of albums displayed a range of different sounds, proving his love of a vast majority of music genres. As with any great artist, they always draw inspiration from a variety of sources, and it’s clear from the latest Shoplifting session that Mo Troper successfully manages to do just that.
Mo Troper’s new album, Troper Sings Brion, is available through Lame-O Records
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