Sillunu Oru Kadhal | Review
Published by Mysorean on Friday, August 18, 2006 at 4:19:00 am.
Another one from Blogical Conclusion. Thought of writing one myself. But when your mind has been expressed so beautifully by someone else, you don't need to waste energy writing the whole thing out. So here it is.
SILLUNU ORU KADHAL
The New Sunday Express - August 13, 2006
IF you’ve ever wondered what it would be like if Cole Porter wrote for Tamil movies, here it is – the title track from Sillunu Oru Kadhal, sung by Tanvi. Paravaigal seyyudhe, pattampoochi seyyudhe... kadhal, she goes, and you only have to translate this to get the mood of Birds do it, bees do it, the opening lines of Porter’s Let’s do it (let’s fall in love), which was immortalised by Ella Fitzgerald in her songbook dedicated to the composer. AR Rahman’s arrangements, though, don’t evoke the dreamy languor of that oldie. Instead, he sets these words to spunky, sprightly, bite-sized bebop riffs; the result comes across as a brassier version of his own Vennila (Iruvar) routed through Dizzy Gillespie’s Oh-Sho-Be-Do-Be. How this number will play in Athipatti I do not know, but it’s fantastic to have Rahman back at his playful best – especially in Tamil cinema, especially when it appeared that he was stashing away the good stuff for the biggies of Bollywood.
The experimentation, the refusal to stick to a winning (or safe) formula is evident even in the not-so-great numbers. The steamy Maja Maja – sung by the dependably-wonderful Shreya Ghoshal along with SPB Charan (who sounds remarkably like his father) – kicks off with guttural clicks, and as Ghoshal croons the opening stanza, Charan oh-so-casually joins her for a line and takes leave just as offhandedly. The dance-ready Machakari (Shankar Mahadevan, Vasundhara Das) has the strangest interludes, one with ghostly vocal harmonising and another full of poppish, faux-African chanting. And Maaricham (Carolisa, Mohammad Aslam, Krishna) is Chandralekha (Thiruda Thiruda) updated to the techno-trance era, where someone – for some reason – begins chanting the name Gautam to the accompaniment of Enigma-like, new-agey music. After this, it’s almost a relief to listen to Ammi Mithichachu (Sirgazhi Sivachidambaram, Swarnalatha, Naresh Iyer, Theni Kunjaramma, Vignesh), a conventional – but catchy – folk tune that’s handed down like a baton from one singer to the next as it races to an explosive finish.
The eminently rewind-worthy Munbe Vaa (Shreya Ghoshal, Naresh Iyer) is a heady love duet whose prelude sets off bubbles of synth-sounds and strings that float through the number, playing tag with the voices. And New York Nagaram has got to be one of the most stylish, least sentimental boy-misses-girl ballads ever. Vaali’s evocative lyrics – vaan ingey, neelam angey, he writes, likening a lonelyheart to a sky that’s lost its blueness – are so casually tossed off by Rahman, they made me imagine the composer with his hands dug deep into the pockets of his jeans, ambling around a snowed-in Big Apple with a broken heart. And the sadness is contagious. Things come together with such a satisfying click – from the masterful use of the female backup singers to the soulful sax interludes – you can’t help looking back at Rahman’s recent Tamil soundtracks and feel a twinge that it’s been so long since he crafted for us such a beauty.
SILLUNU ORU KADHAL
The New Sunday Express - August 13, 2006
IF you’ve ever wondered what it would be like if Cole Porter wrote for Tamil movies, here it is – the title track from Sillunu Oru Kadhal, sung by Tanvi. Paravaigal seyyudhe, pattampoochi seyyudhe... kadhal, she goes, and you only have to translate this to get the mood of Birds do it, bees do it, the opening lines of Porter’s Let’s do it (let’s fall in love), which was immortalised by Ella Fitzgerald in her songbook dedicated to the composer. AR Rahman’s arrangements, though, don’t evoke the dreamy languor of that oldie. Instead, he sets these words to spunky, sprightly, bite-sized bebop riffs; the result comes across as a brassier version of his own Vennila (Iruvar) routed through Dizzy Gillespie’s Oh-Sho-Be-Do-Be. How this number will play in Athipatti I do not know, but it’s fantastic to have Rahman back at his playful best – especially in Tamil cinema, especially when it appeared that he was stashing away the good stuff for the biggies of Bollywood.
The experimentation, the refusal to stick to a winning (or safe) formula is evident even in the not-so-great numbers. The steamy Maja Maja – sung by the dependably-wonderful Shreya Ghoshal along with SPB Charan (who sounds remarkably like his father) – kicks off with guttural clicks, and as Ghoshal croons the opening stanza, Charan oh-so-casually joins her for a line and takes leave just as offhandedly. The dance-ready Machakari (Shankar Mahadevan, Vasundhara Das) has the strangest interludes, one with ghostly vocal harmonising and another full of poppish, faux-African chanting. And Maaricham (Carolisa, Mohammad Aslam, Krishna) is Chandralekha (Thiruda Thiruda) updated to the techno-trance era, where someone – for some reason – begins chanting the name Gautam to the accompaniment of Enigma-like, new-agey music. After this, it’s almost a relief to listen to Ammi Mithichachu (Sirgazhi Sivachidambaram, Swarnalatha, Naresh Iyer, Theni Kunjaramma, Vignesh), a conventional – but catchy – folk tune that’s handed down like a baton from one singer to the next as it races to an explosive finish.
The eminently rewind-worthy Munbe Vaa (Shreya Ghoshal, Naresh Iyer) is a heady love duet whose prelude sets off bubbles of synth-sounds and strings that float through the number, playing tag with the voices. And New York Nagaram has got to be one of the most stylish, least sentimental boy-misses-girl ballads ever. Vaali’s evocative lyrics – vaan ingey, neelam angey, he writes, likening a lonelyheart to a sky that’s lost its blueness – are so casually tossed off by Rahman, they made me imagine the composer with his hands dug deep into the pockets of his jeans, ambling around a snowed-in Big Apple with a broken heart. And the sadness is contagious. Things come together with such a satisfying click – from the masterful use of the female backup singers to the soulful sax interludes – you can’t help looking back at Rahman’s recent Tamil soundtracks and feel a twinge that it’s been so long since he crafted for us such a beauty.
