Here is my first attempt at penning a music review for a movie album. I do not have any pretensions whatsoever about my supposed “knowledge” over musical matters. These are just the musingly felt reflections of an aam-film music listener;)
Billa 2 (Yuvan Shankar Raja) : A Music
Review
With the "Billa-2 Theme" , Yuvan manages to create a HansZimmer-like-sounding heavy duty version of the Billa theme. The solo trumpet at the beginning and the violins make it sound particularly sinister; with the whistle at the end being stylishly cool.
“Idhayam Intha Idhayam” sung beautifully by Shweta Pandit, begins with an almost Rahmanish piano, soon slipping into an instantly likeable tune punctuated by tablas and a whole bunch of classical instruments. The tune does betray a “heard-somewhere-but-can’t-remember-where” feel. Disappointingly, the lyrics largely turn out to be rather staid !
If “Yedho Mayakkam” is intended to be a groovy club number, it certainly scores at that. The nadaswaram-guitar combo at the beginning is instantly catchy, followed by some lovely Rihanna-esque singing by Tanvi Shah !! It goes horrible when Yuvan pushes the song into his staple techno-trance rhythms, especially annoying is that typical electronic blurp sound straight from STR’s “Evan di onna peththaan” from Vaanam !! The “Bounce-bounce” part also sounds uninspiringly kinder-gartenish. Overall, the song should look better on screen with Thala dancing to this one !!
More Vaanam-style techno rhythms and electronic blurps follow in “Gangster”. Neither does the tune offer much salvation, oscillating between sounding as a church-choir and a kindergarten rhyme. The English lyrics sound particularly bad – “Gang, Gang, Gangster, Here comes the monster, You will surrender” !! ??@#^#
“Unakkulle Mirugam” has some inspired singing by Ranjith over a proper sounding rock base and reveals some good, high-sounding lyric writing ! The theme music interludes stand out amidst some particularly expressive guitar and drums. Though this track might take time to catch the attention of the popularity charts , it looks almost certain to turn out super-heavy on screen !!
“Madurai Ponnu” is the crowd favourite item song that is sure to receive anthemic reverence from the front rows ! A funnily-sounding treatment of the Arabian interludes, some heady singing by Andrea over the tavil rhythm and some brilliant orchestration by Yuvan makes a hard-to-avoid cocktail !!
Overall, though belonging to the clichéd “mixed bag”, Billa 2 certainly represents a welcome break from the mediocre stuff that Yuvan has been churning out in recent times. Ajith’s persona is only going to add visually to the songs once they hit the screens. Though Yuvan manages to pull out a commercial success, one can’t help wonder if he misses another chance to hit the next level.
