Review

Harris Jeyraj scores again with style

 
Vettaiyadu Vilaiyadu starring Kamal Haasan and Jyotika has some good restrained music which in turn lilts, moves, touches and pleases

Vettaiyadu Vilaiyadu
Hit Musics
Music: Harris Jeyaraj

Starring Kamal Haasan and Jyotika, this film has the almost mandatory Bombay Jayshri song. Why mandatory?  Because it has music by Harris Jeyaraj of course. And ever since she gave him his first hit with that hypnotisingly tender Vaseegara in Minnale, he has been faithful. His last hit Ghajini had a hit duet Suttum vizhi sudare featuring her and Sriram Parasuram (Anuradha Sriram’s husband and the man behind the band Three Brothers and a Violin).

The first track Karka, Karka by Devan, Tipu, Nakul and Andrea is slick, with clean guitar riffs which back the song with ripples of refreshing water. The track is efficiently rendered and the lyrics by Thamarai paint a picture of a courageous man who can go about life with a pocketful of rye, sorry death. The interludes are short and to the point. The change in chord which takes you from the interlude to the stanza is very pleasant. There’s very good rap by Top Dollar, Lil Curry Fizz, Akhenaton, US. If Blaze’s rap has you no longer rapping along, then this will get you sitting up.

Partha Mudal is by Bombay Jayashri and Unni Menon. Harris tries to recapture the feel of his Ghajini hit, pairing a heavy classical male voice with a not so conventional classically trained female voice. The old worldly clip clop of horse hooves along with the harmonica evoke a cowboy western feel and take you back at least half a decade. The whole track is quiet in comparison to the very noisy, a-change-a-minute music in vogue today. Charmingly old fashioned and dripping sentimental!

Manjal Veiyal is a Hariharan, Vijay and Nakul number. The romantic allusion to the moon and her battalion of stars is nicely worked into an unsentimental musical world.  No typical soaring string section or distant ambient sequences. The song is also not usual in form. It has a stanza and chorus portion which gets repeated four times with a bridge portion which takes off and lands you back soon in the song. The change is in what the guitars do. First time, lovely, far spaced riffs, second repetition, the electric guitar with its slaps packing a punch along with the clean guitar wahs and splashes, third time around it has the distorted guitar picking up more energy. The last time, voices ad lib on the chorus. The lead on the interlude is cool. The fat bass and the beat is reminiscent of Rahman’s Endrendrum Punnagai from Alai Payuthe.

Mahalakshmi and Srinivas sing the romantic Uyirile. While the opening lines are sedate and not very inspiring, it’s the stanzas which touch you with their melodic structure. Nothing outstanding where arrangement is concerned or the vocals which are efficient but not more. The lyrics with their images of distant love and the difficulties of getting together are perfectly in tune with the piano heavy arrangement till the second interlude where the dramatic strings take over.  On the last stanza the strings play lovely chords on Srinivas singing Va vandu ennai serndu vidu, en tholgalil serndu vidu. That’s the best part of this song.

Frankom Solar Sai and Sowyma Raoh, who first made it big singing for Sandeep Chowta,  sings the hot Neruppae. The Arabic inflections seem to be thrown into the song just to make it interesting, but don’t seem to actually belong there. The joys of playing with fire is distilled into this one!

An album you definitely want to buy, if you enjoy nice wholesome music which flows, which doesn’t inflict pain on your ear drums, and where even the hot number (lyrically speaking) is restrained. Go play, forget the hunt!

S Suchitra Lata

Published on 18 April 2006

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