Art Machine
Just another former infatuation junkie

Artist: Trio
Label: Polygram Records
Genre: Alternative
Rating: *** (3 out of 4)
Availability: Widely Available / eMusic Download
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Hey! Isn’t that a song from that commercial? What was it for again? Volkswagen! Yeah! That funky little tune built around the Casio Keyboard loop.

That’s the reaction the first track of Da Da Da usually gets. The song – “Da Da Da I Don’t Love You You Don’t Love Me Aha Aha Aha” – was picked up by the automobile manufacturer for a funky little commercial. This resulted in a top ten hit and a memorable video in which the members of Trio sauntered through a busy dance club, surreptitiously pulling out their Casio Keyboard and pressing a few keys here and there.

The result of Volkswagen’s selection of music was this particular album. Da Da Da is, in fact, a compilation of tracks from the band’s two European releases (Trio and Error and Bye Bye). That catchy little tune was well over a decade old by the time Volkswagen signed the papers to license it. Considering that its entire basis is the old portable Casio keyboard and its built-in rythm track, it’s aged very well.

“Da Da Da This Title Is Incredibly Long And Everybody Just Calls It ‘Da Da Da,’ Anyway” is an incredibly simple song. A tiny little rythm track, a few plunky Casio notes, and a simple vocal line (“I don’t love you you don’t love me. / Uh-huh. / Da da da”). And yet it is incredibly catchy for its entire 3:26 duration. This is the stuff club playlists are made of.

So the trick to this album, then, is that it’s not all that different from the title track. Feature a few songs like “Boom Boom,” “Bye Bye,” “Anna, Letmeinletmeout,” and “Girl Girl Girl.” All of them simple, hook-ridden, and with vocals that everybody can learn after about thirty seconds. In the late 80’s, Trio was creating music for the late 90’s.

So let’s sum up the facts.

First of all, this is not an album for lyrical analysis. The vocal lines are short, simple, and not all that varied. Second, it’s not an album for people looking for virtuosos to emulate. The instrumentation is almost as simple as the lyrics. And third, while it’s got nice progressions in a few songs it’s not about varying the sound.

So is this a successful album with a lot of reply value? Not really. But what it is is a slice of bouncy fun. A lot of these tracks fit very snugly into your dance mixes, and they do it without ever really getting annoying. But it’s hard to be annoying when you’re so shallow that you don’t even grasp the concept of “deep.”

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 18th, 2003 at 7:18 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.