Ah Aah, The Rising, Water

{As usual, not a review - just a place to jot down thoughts - long overdue}

Ah Aah
Those Rahman fans who thought the bag of fast, pacy songs had dried out, should give the title track a listen - some fans have gone as far as to lament its presence in this film, for according to them, it was good enough to be a Rajnikanth intro song :-) - high praise indeed. I didn't fancy too much of the rest of the album, but there were snatches that I really liked. Shreya Ghoshal gets better each year and I have to follow her work more seriously. She's done a good job (and I haven't heard her sing such songs before) with "Nazhuvuthu" which also presented a few interesting bits. OTOH, I would really implore ARR to stop using Madhushree - her recent efforts have been huge dampeners. So I didn't like "Mazhilazhage" much. The faster version of the same song (different lyrics - interesting that) in "Maramkothiye" is a touch better, but no great shakes. "Thigu Thigu" for some reason reminds me of Ilayaraja in the early/mid 90s - not sure why. More non-Tamil female singing credits - this time Sadhana Sargam. Hugely annoying male voice - Blaaze? - aargh. "Varugirai" - didn't care much for this too, sadly - but atleast Hariharan and Chitra don't suck in the singing dept. Rewind then, back to "Anbe Aaruyire" and hear the music director croon soulfully.

(BTW, "Ah Aah" is really the name of the film - no joking.)

The Rising
This album was understandably not a hit - understandably, because in the ultimate analysis, it wasn't all that great, and plus it would have demanded some more patience from its listeners. Since I was anyway going to invest that kind of time, I did come away with some positives than the average listeners.

There are three variations of the title track. It took me some time to figure out that the first was actually not about Mangal Pandey, but a general evocation to the beginning of a day and let everything be good. I liked this one and the last one which digs out defiance from despair (I seem to be a sucker for these). If I can forget about the annoying nasal twangs of Madhushree again, the Holi song - especially, the spoken part towards the end - had me interested. "Mai.n vaari vaari" also caught my fancy as did the seductive, gypsy "Rasiyaa" tune, which I found quite fresh. I'm glad ARR has decided to stop doing these "period" films for it's taking its toll and I'm tired of the by now ubiquituous Muslim devotional ("Al-Madath Maulaa" in this one). "Takey Takey" is more of a situational song - I didn't think much of it. Trivia note is that Rahman's kids have now registered their voices on an official soundtrack with this song.

Water
I'm not going to write much about this unless I hear a full CD quality album, but reactions are that it's obviously quite spare in arrangements and I don't think it's going to be a crowd-pleaser by a mile. I think the reason Rahman rates it highly must be because of the challenge it must have posed personally - requires a completely different set of gears.