Waterloo Records

Mo Troper is truly one of a kind, and that�s never been more�apparent than on his fifth full-length, the winkingly titled MTV.�Arriving hot on the heels of his 2021 full-length, Dilettante,�the album finds the Portland, OR-based power pop extraor-dinaire diving further into home-recorded immediacy to make�a record that feels like a strikingly direct conduit to the world�of Mo�where heartbreak, hilarity, and hooks all go hand-in-hand.�

MTV hurtles through 15 songs in just 31 minutes, with most�of the tracks never even coming close to the three-minute�mark. The sequence feels like a combination of a fever�dream and a travel diary, intertwining tales of romantic long-ing with the ups and downs of cross-country touring. Songs�like �Across The USA,� �Royal Jelly,� or �Coke Zero� unravel�the headaches and heartbreaks, often alternating between�unflinching emotional details and legitimately funny one-lin-ers. �I feel like I�m just in this mode of rebelling against the�expectation for artists to be emotionally or aesthetically cohe-sive,� Troper says. �I think about all my favorite records and�songwriters, and they�re often these people who would have�really depressing stuff and then insane moments of levity that�don�t get talked about as much. I want to make music that�s�emotional but also campy or sarcastic or resonates in other�ways. I�m like, �you know what, it�s all me."