Pudhupettai - album review

As I have maintained all along and probably mentioned in many of my earlier posts, the Yuvan - Selvaraghavan combo is one of the 3 best in Tamil cinema right now and that Raam is by far the best album of the year. And so when the news got around that their 4th album Pudhupet is getting released, I was all excited and eagerly awaiting to see if Pudhupet can actually beat Raam to that title. And when i did hear them, to be very frank, I was just blown away by the sheer quality of the album. I do not recall any album in TFM in the recent past which is as radically different in each of its compositions as we see in Pudhupet. Virumandi probably was the album that comes closest to this one as one of those very few albums that were composed with the motto Songs for the movie rather than movies for the songs.

The fact that only 4 out of the 10 tracks can be even called as typical songs is in itself a tribute to the daringly different path that both Selva Raghavan & Yuvan have treaded. The album consists of 4 songs, 1 remix & 5 themes. I have this bad habit of reading reviews of the album before listening to them and I usually read the reviews of these 3 folks - Yours Musically by Sureshkumar, Milliblog by Karthik (he is the one who maintains the itwofs site) and Minor Scale by Manoj. The blog by Karthik is a pretty interesting one. He writes the reviews of albums in less than 100 words, his reason being that the albums these days do not deserve more than that. But when he himself broke that norm and wrote a detailed 200 word review for this album, I knew I was in for something special. When you consider the fact that he did not spend more than 100 words for the recent Rang De Basanti album (which by the way is getting only raving reviews from ARR fans & very ordinary reviews from other sources) should speak much about the high standards he has set for his reviews.

So, it is with these high expectations that I started listening to this album and as I said earlier, I was completely blown away by the music. Every composition in the album oozes with quality and when you hear some of the songs in a good audio system, it is all the more wonderful to the ears.

To me, the pick of the album is not actually a song but one of themes titled Going through emotions. Awesome orchestration and to me, I just want to keep listening to this theme. Other than that, all the 'songs' in the album are very catchy and they grab your attention the very first time you hear them. If you are expecting another Muthe muthamma out of Neruppu vaayinil just bcos of the fact that Kamal sang that one for Mottai's other son, you will be in for a shock as this is as exactly opposite in feel as it can get. Kamal's coarse voice (like the way he sang Ninaivo oru paravai)brings out the essence of the song. The Oru naalil song is another of those trademark haunting Yuvan melody of the album. But as much a fan of Yuvan's voice I am, I still feel that this was probably not the song that he should have chosen to sing. He loses the pitch very clearly at many places that even someone like me can spot it. My only hope with this song is in its picturization where Selvaraghavan should have a good job to compensate this. But nevertheless, a very good melody (the charanams will have you humming in no time) and some very meaningful lyrics. I will have to add here that the beats & the instruments used in this song resemble the ones used by Lucky Ali in his Sifar album songs. The tune remains original though. BTW, have any of you noticed the similarity in the voices of ARR and Yuvan? Particularly, the way their Tamil pronunciation. It is not that the way they pronounce it is incorrect but there is this certain artificialness to it.

Then comes this set of 3 songs - all of them with some very beautiful beats and instantly likeable. The Variyaa song has some really cute beats. This can not be called a song per se but the beats will make you crave for more listenings. The Enga area song comes next with Dhanush crooning for himself. The choice of Dhanush is actually a very interesting one. That song is kind of tailor-made for someone like Dhanush who does not have any particular singing capabilities. Then comes the gangster rap song Pul pesum, a stunningly orchestrated song that leaves you completely in awe of Yuvan when done with listening that song.

I had compared Yuvan to Dravid in the Tamil music director – Indian cricketer comparison I did a couple of months back. I guess I should make some changes to that. Yuvraj is probably the one with whom Yuvan should be compared to since Dravid too is not getting any younger & Yuvraj is higher up on the talent level than Dravid. When Yuvraj burst on the cricketing scene with that incredible 81 against the Aussies in Nairobi, everyone’s prediction was that he was going to be the next Sachin. Though he has not gone on to translate that abundant talent of his into runs, he has been showing us all how immensely talented he is on various occasions (latest being the 3rd test against the Sri Lankans). And he is young & he along with others like Dhoni & Pathan are clearly the future of Indian cricket. Similarly, with Yuvan, we all knew that he is talented but it is only during the last 2 years that he has been showing off his talent in the form of some very good albums. And he is just 23 years of age & so he is clearly the future of the TFM field. I just could not believe that he is all of 23 years of age bcos musicians like professionals in all other fields tend to mature as they get old and I am sure that there are some great musical times ahead for Tamil film music lovers, thanks to Yuvan.

Easily the album of the year in TFM by a long long way!! Yuvan is on fire here. Special appreciation to Selvaraghavan for extracting the best out of Yuvan in spite of him scoring all those other movies. Albums like these is what the Tamil film music scenario has been missing. Kamal is the only who does this but then he restricts that to his directorial attempts (he resorts to the usual commercial album for other movies). Three cheers to the Pudhupet team for travelling in unchartered territories