Trike – Trike & the Vikings
I’m quite certain that multiple parallels have been drawn between food and music. The one that intrigues me the most is the inexplicable urge one often gets, after experiencing something not quite to our liking, is to insist on bestowing others we know with it – “you have to taste this, it’s awful!” is amongst the most perplexing of phrases, particularly considering that despite being forewarned, most will, albeit tentatively, do exactly as instructed.
~If it’s required, you may consider that a public apology to certain friends who succumbed to my insistence.~
You might think that on an album where songs such as ‘My Little Pony’ and ‘Smack Me Around’ co-exist, you’d be in for some weird kind of exaggerated fun and/or disturbing horror, and you’d be about half right. The problem is that while the retro, occasionally childish and chintzy synth-pop stylings of Trike are at least competent, and even at times probably even danceable, it’s the treatment of the subject matter that leaves a fairly sour taste.
It’s never quite gratuitous enough to maintain appeal on the basis of schlock, nor is it taken far enough to be as perverse as it could be in an interesting or challenging way. It smacks of immaturity, but is a little too sleazy (and mystifyingly often unenthusiastically so) to be counted as good old fashioned fun, and just isn’t ever taken seriously enough to be taken, well, seriously.
At worst, Trike and The Vikings sounds much like I imagine the results would be if a couple of children’s television show presenters / singers went to work still very much under the influence of a sordid weekend bender and decided to try something a little bit ‘different’ – the broadcast of which horrifies the majority of the population while a very select few delight in it. At best, there are a couple of moments where it sounds almost like a tongue-in-cheek attempt at avant-garde novelty-pop, taking the Mickey out of mindless pop acts such as Aqua and tracks like ‘Barbie Girl’.
I will say that Trike and the Vikings isn’t wholly awful. While certainly not to my liking, it does have a modicum of merit. Or at least, I’d be happy enough to issue a gold star for a couple of ideas that, had they been handled a little more maturely or effectively, could have been much more interesting or much more fun. As it stands, however, if in the future The Wiggles or Hi-5 get any similar ideas, I’ll be one of those people asking the general public to please, for Heaven’s sake, think of the children.