Aadhavan

Music: Harris Jeyaraj


Soft notes backed by liberal and yet delicate strings of the guitar, singers rendering in lower scale; their high pitch notes which dangerously abuts melancholy, the chorus humming the tune in pop style or like a pathos, the saranams of the songs being just fast slow fast slow versions of the pallavi or nothing related to the mood created by the initial motifs, incomprehensible words or mere noises becoming interludes: these are the set pieces one could find in any of Harris’ compositions. With all these to his backing, Harris shells out his 29th album from his repetitive factory only to surprise us this time with the different proportion of the same ingredients.

Hasile Fisiliye (Karthik, Harini, Dr. Burn, Maya)

The adagio rendering of “Byile Bylamore”, “Hasili fisili” builds up into an allegro movement preceding the rap, with Karthik taking over with his enticing humming, complimenting the rush of feeling as expressed in the lyrics and finally Harini breaks the ice with her charming voice. The addition of Dr. Burn in this version is another highlight.

Yeno Yeno (Shail Hada, Sudha, Andrea)

“Yeno Yeno” , yet another “Blue” inspired number from Harris, has the perfect classic pop feel given by Andrea and the synchronization of her’s and Sudha’s voice, followed by the MJ inspired rap and backed by chorus towards the end has top notch sound editing.

Dammaku (Benny Dayal)

The beautiful mouth organ introducing us to this number and the protagonist in turn with this song breaks into a rhapsody, preaching us the MGR-Kanadhasan principles, but Benny with his joyous modulations, especially “rasa vantha lesa pada” makes you appreciate this number, a better attempt from Harris in terms of intro songs.

Varayo (Chinmayee, Unni Krishnan)

The melody of the Piano which broaches us into the world of tender love in the form of Chinmayee’s voice backed by guitar and piano, ‘Varayo’ flows blandly until Unni attempts at singing high notes in a whisper, introducing ‘r’ and ‘z’ to the words, especially during the crescendo. The cello which sweeps us off the feet with its tragic sound and then the increasingly intensified cry in the form of opera which falls sharp at the coda, all backed by the piano is very exhilarating.

Dekho Dekho (Suvi, Sandhya, Sri Charan)

An attempt at depicting the cultural differences, Dekho a reminiscent of Samurai, Arasatchi, Ghajini, is a cacophonous collection of rap, pop and Indian classical, which could have worked if not for the poorly written carnatic notes.

Maasi maasi (Mano, Mega)
The unbearable African sounds and arrhythmic two syllable note sung by Mano, concoct into ‘Maasi Maasi’ a reminiscent to his ‘Muquala Muquabula’ and also ‘aatama therotama’. This African style song does have great usage of drums.

Harris does have gone for innovative usage of instruments and also succeeded to a certain extent in fusion, the highlight of this album which has poor lyrics. The irritating two syllable alliteration (wannabe) still continues in this outing as well and yet the change from feminish male singers who sing only in one style is a relief and that does the trick.