Music Reviews – Enthiran(Robot) & others

LAFANGEY PARINDEY- Johnny Gaddar’s successor, kind of

Lafangey Parindey surprisingly boasts of a nice music score. For some reason Pradeep Sarkar always manages to make progressively worse movies, and get budget to outdo his own track the next time.
The music says ‘R. Anandh’ and to not see the oft-saturating and frown-inducing names was reason enough. That the composer hails from south is another reason for me. I wanted to check out the sound. It was only when I hit the interlude of Dhatad Tatad that I was reminded of Agosh’ Paisa, a great song and a great video(spoofing the ads in the late-nineties, the video gave unadulterated pleasure in those days of good music videos a la Euphoria’s Mantra and the entire album was paisa wasool and not available anywhere now, neither this nor any other paisa wasool indie-rock albums) and some of their rather refreshingly good music and characteristic funky use of fusion and snappy zingly music in Zor. And to my surprise, and after sitting through some annoying online interviews(one of them had an insightful interviewer going pseudo-gaga over the Mohit Chauhan ‘fast title track’, and they also played the timeless anthem from a 3 Idiots, enough said), I discovered that it is Anandh indeed from AGOSH(Anandh, Gopal, Shaleen), also behind highly successful ad-jingles like Limca, and hence the Pradeep Sarkar connection, and I was suddenly more motivated to check out the score.
The music is certainly no discovery as such, but it doesn’t disappoint either on a good sound system.

BORN TO FLY – Theme Piece
Synth-mood building does end up building the mood. A somber piano heavy orchestra slowly blends into a breezy strummy piano air, and blends back into the typical film emotional theme. Some more drama is established by a very western orchestra, something heard in more Bollywood films now than Hollywood. Then a little of Dhatad dhatad(what a highly uncomfortable phrase! Might as well call it Pakad Pakad, anyways) beat and it’s a nice theme piece nonetheless.
I would cringe to have any thoughts of who appears in these songs in this film but just thought this stuff is a little too good to accompany anything that the title card reads of.

DHATAD TATAD – Shail Hada(sounds like Shakar Mahadevan), Anushka Manchanda
Pardon the bad phrasing, that’s what happens when you convert an infectious accidental riff to a film track, the effect more or less makes up for all the lyrical screw-ups. Limited scope, and even less hears warranted. Though I must mention the innovative interlude, very alternate indie-rock, mostly identified in film scores of better-day SEL in Johnny Gaddar. Heavy guitars blend into a brilliant electronic lead with a heavy bass in the background, this piece alone is enough to show the potential of Anandh. Of course one would wish to hear less of the melodrama-heavy lyrics but can’t help it given it is a Hindi film score, confused as ever. Average song, great guitars.

LAFANGEY PARINDEY – Ronit Sarkar
Ronit has a very young, flexible, full of possibilities voice which gives a young blood mood to the title track, and Anandh mixes it just to the right measure of aggression and verve. The song has an intriguing start with rough strings building up into a solid fuller chorus, again very Johnny Gaddar, in a good way. Though it has all the right elements, the song suffers from a frequent weakness, gets repetitive and longish by half-time. There is nothing wrong really with keeping it short if you don’t have anything left to say, but I guess it is symbolic of our times, and films. Here also you have an extended case of synths buying the little extra time before it concludes. Another area Anandh could work on is the loudness, loudness should fade away and reassert itself to make it user-friendly, whereas this song and the score, largely is constantly loud, which doesn’t really help the compositions much. He doesn’t need to look far, his own album Paisa might be helpful enough on that account.

MAN LAFANGA – Mohit Chauhan
The song comes with the regular ups(instant hit, pleasing to the ears, no reason to hate unless you see a ‘Pritam’ on the credits) and downs(“which song was that?”reaction after a month or two) of a Mohit Chauhan number.
Not much musical surprises here, except a latter-half detour into some abstract spanish/italian-sounding vocals, nice for continuing the rhythm-heavy acoustics.

NAIN PARINDEY- Shilpa Rao
I must say I am not a big fan of Shilpa Rao. She also seems to be suffering from the Mohit Chauhan Syndrome. Similar sounding songs, predictable patterns, structures and arcs of a song. If the intention is to evoke any emotions, I got one. Yawn.

RANG DAALEIN – Suraj Jagan
Groovy opening, impressive chorus, this song does redeem the album’s saturating sound a little. And the loudness is also surprisingly underplayed. Suraj Jagan’s voice is a refreshing change, especially the way he says ‘Parindey’ before a supercool lead triggers. Anandh surely taps his primary talent well in this song. The sound is very slick and ambitiously mischievous,shades of grey of the night and a constant smoke, something which goes well with the kind of arrangement that Anandh puts together. This is a better contender for a title track, and for once, the length doesn’t go demanding on your ears. Great interludes, innovative use of bagpipes to blend with a very-Indian percussion keeps it real and very charged all through.

DABANGG -Wanted revisited, if you care
The album is full of commercial sounds, upper circle lyrics and lower stall punches, enough and more scope for item numbers and loud dance numbers,with the exception of Tere Mast Mast Do Nain. The song stays with you even after a considerable time, something innocent about it in the harsh times takes me back to the melodious(and better) times of Robinhood ‘Tere Naam’ Pandey.
And a last word, Sajid Wajid Brothers, please leave Omkara, Vishal Ji and party alone.

Acknowledgment:
Who is R. Anandh
Agosh – Paisa(album)

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