Yuvan strikes twice

Last week was a special one if you are a Yuvan fan since we had 2 Yuvan albums getting released within 2 days of each other. Sandaikozhi and Kalvanin Kaadhali were the 2 albums. Though I did not have much expectations on the Kalvanin Kaadhali album (mainly bcos of the reason that the director was a newbie), Sandaikozhi was one album I was eagerly looking forward to. Primary reason being that the director's (Lingusamy) previous films had some good music (Run and Ananadham) and I still personally feel that Run is the best album that Vidhyasagar has composed in his Tamil cinema career.

After listening to both the albums last week, I guess I will have to say that I was wrong with my expectations since it is Kalvanin Kaadhali that walks away with the honors of the best of the 2 albums. In fact Kalvanin Kaadhali is kind of on par with Arindhum Ariyaamalum, one of Yuvan's better efforts in his short career. And I will have to say that Sandaikozhi ended up as a little bit of a disappointment. Since Sandaikozhi seems to be a village based theme movie, the songs too are different and sound folkish. While Yuvan is definitely better than ARR when it comes to composing songs for a rural movie, he is still a long way short of his father's amazing skills in the same area.

Coming to the individual tracks in each of the albums, Dhavani Potta Deepavali song is easily the best of the Sandaikozhi album. Apart from that, though all the other songs sound ordinary, each one of them has a very catchy underlying beat. Even the Mundaasu Sooriyane song, which is the usual 'praising the oor naattamai' kind of song and something we would have seen in those countless K.S.Ravikumar & Sarath Kumar movies, still has a very good beat to start off. The Ennamo Nadakkiradhe song comes a close second in the album ranking. The other 2 songs will probably appeal more while seen on-screen. My rating on the songs (out of a potential 5):

1) Dhavani potta Deepavali - 4.5

2) Ennamo nadakkiradhe - 4

3) Mundaasu sooriyane - 3.5

4) Kaekkaa kodukkira boomi idhu - 3.25

5) Gumthalakkadi gaana - 3

Kalvanin Kaadhali songs on the other hand are just awesome and come as a pleasant surprise. All the 5 songs have something different to offer. I am not sure if there has been anybody in TFM who can mix stuff like the way Yuvan does. Like the Eno Kangal song which is my pick of the album. It starts off like a very slow melody and when Yuvan starts his cute rendering, I was literally instantly hooked on to. I can even bet that you cant resist yourself from liking the piece the very first time you hear it. The lyrics too add to the fun of Yuvan's nasal and husky voice. Yuvan's voice, which has drawn flak in many reviews before, is something I love so much and there is no better song than this one where one would like his voice.

The Kudakkooli song which was rumored to be a Nethu raathiri remix doesn’t actually turn out to be so and the Nethu raathiri yamma line is just used once. But nevertheless is a very interesting song and again with some superb catchy beats. ARR had tried a similar sensuous song in Ah Aah but this one beats it just hands up in spite of the other song having SPB singing it. Yuvan's forte is his melodies and he does not disappoint us with the only melody of the album - Uyir Piriyum is a very soothing number and Ranjith deserves all the credit for a very good rendering. My ranking of the songs here would be:

1) Eno kangal - 4.5

2) Uyir piriyum - 4.5

3) Kudakkooli - 4.5

4) Taj Mahal oviya kaadhal 4.25

5) Ivan kattil naattu mannan thaan - 4.0

One will have to give Yuvan a lot of appreciation. Just look at the list of movies that he has come out with during this year alone:

Raam (IMO, the best album of this year in TFM)

Arindhum Ariyaamalum

Oru Kallooriyin kadhai

Daas

Kanda Naal Mudhal (Yuvan's most complete album of the year)

Kalvanin Kaadhali

Sandaikozhi

On top of all these albums, he has 2 big ones coming up very soon, 2 albums with his most favorite directors - Vallavan for Simbu and Pudhupet for Selvaraghavan. The Yuvan--Selvaraghavan is one of the 3 best combos we have in Tamil cinema right now, with Harris Jeyaraj--Gautham Menon and ARR--Mani Rathnam being the other 2. But, in spite of these 2 good albums, I still feel that Yuvan has to cut down on the number of albums he is committing to compose. He still has about 10 albums in the pipeline. At this rate, Yuvan might overtake ARR in the number of albums in another 2-3 years. ARR has a total of 51 Tamil albums in his 13 year career and Yuvan already has 32 albums in his short 4 year career (if you are ready to ignore his break after his first 2 albums). Just imagine this - If he had not done albums like Daas and OKK and instead used the good numbers in those 2 albums in other albums like Sandaikozhi and Kalvanin Kaadhali, we would have got 5 complete albums from Yuvan in 1 year, something really amazing. Another good thing about Yuvan is that most of the films that he composed songs for, are doing good at the box office. Among his releases this year, Raam, AA and KNM have been declared good hits which actually goes a long way in sustaining the interest of the listeners in the songs.

Bottom line - The father's genes have surely rubbed off in a big way. Yuvan rocks, totally!!