Director Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari debuted last year with Nil Battey Sannata , and handed the composing job to two other promising newbies, Rohan Utpat and Vinayak Salve. With her sophomore Bollywood film, Bareilly Ki Barfi , Tiwari goes the multi-composer route with a few usual suspects. Let’s see how that has fared this time.
Arko Pravo Mukherjee pens the lyrics for ‘ Nazm Nazm ’ which comes across as a derivative of his song ‘ Dariya ’ from Baar Baar Dekho (2016). Despite the new film’s track having a better melody, both songs suffer from the same problem: the composer’s own annoyingly processed voice. However, the song’s other versions are better especially the one performed by Ayushmann Khurrana which has a better arrangement with a few Punjabi phrases peppered throughout. The best rendition of ‘ Nazm Nazm ’ features Sumedha Karmahe that’s accentuated with great flute play. In ‘ Sweety Tera Drama, ’ composer Tanishk Bagchi finally has a solo winner of his own creation. The short track is full of energy and Dev Negi, Pawni Pandey and Shraddha Pandit deliver it superbly aided by Pravesh Mallick’s folk rap.
Bagchi’s second song, a co-composition with his old partner Vayu Srivastava — ‘ Twist Kamariya ,’ goes overboard with its electronic elements and ends up being forgettable and confused despite the presence of Harshdeep Kaur, Altamash Faridi and other good singers behind the mic. Samira Koppikar, who composed a song for the 2015 film NH10 , offers two versions of a track called ‘ Bairaagi ’. While Arijit Singh handles the rock-flavoured rendition, Koppikar herself lends her voice to the folksy one. Samir Uddin’s ‘ Badass Babuaa ’ sounds similar to the title track of Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! (2008). However, it’s quite engaging with its folk and hip hop blend delivered to a tee by the composer with Abhishek Nailwal and Neha Bhasin.
Simply put, the soundtrack is mediocre and rides on the back of two fun tracks.
Vipin Nair writes about music on MusicAloud.com and curates music on Apple Music as MusicAloud
