Rex Vijayan crafts a colorfully experimental pop soundtrack in ‘Valiya Perunnal’
The background music for films holds a special place in the entire music canon.
A background score is not a standalone musical entity like singles or albums, but at the same time it should work well in standalone forms as well.
Compounding the problem is the fact that even as background score is penned by a musician, he or she does it to help someone else- the director- tell a story or communicate emotions in a specific manner of their choosing.
This brings up the question of the spiritual ownership of the music- does it belong solely to the music composer, or to the collective of different collaborators who inspire and pen the music?
If background scores come with these problems, songs that are composed for a film have them on a different magnitude.
For one thing, songs- at least, in Indian cinema, often disrupt the story and play out as separate entities even when they form a part of the movie. It’s as though the musician wants to simultaneously take our mind off the main storyline for four or five minutes while at the same time adding value to that same story.
Film songs, for this reason, usually end up occupying a strange space- one in which they serve neither masters- not the film director in telling the story or the musician’s own personal fascination with an idea.
But then, there are the exceptions- songs which exhale the emotions of the movie, and seem to revel in the world that the movie has created, sometimes not just representing that world aurally but also bolstering it, forming an extra layer of concrete in the structure of the film.
That’s the case with the songs that Rex Vijayan has composed for the stunningly upbeat film, ‘Valiya perunnal.’
Not all the songs are equally good in the album, but there’s no arguing that all of them follow the movie’s modus operandi of wearing a spirited enthusiasm on its sleeve- and coming out in blazing colors for that reason.
Rex Vijayan- the lead guitarist of the iconic Malayam rock band, Avial is no stranger to spirited youthful enthusiasm- an emotion that he has channeled through his guitar in many of the band’s songs.
In this film though, it’s more an electronic and r&b mix that the composer seems to have gone for, with rock n’roll drumming and heavy bass guitar lines playing significant cameos in the songs rather than the main parts.
A let down in some of the songs is that the lyrics sometimes slips into frivolity.
The film is about a bunch of youngsters living in a harbor town in Kochi, getting mixed up in crime. While many of the characters express silliness and immaturity that are in keeping to their age, the same thing when carried over to the lyrics in an artless manner feels like slaps on the face of the listener rather than a truthful reflection of the characters’ state of mind. (The credit for lyrics is shared by Anwar Ali and Saju Sreenivas.)
Nonetheless, it’s only a slight objection in the largely colorful pop songs that Vijayan and co. has crafted.
The album may not be great from start to finish, but it’s a thrilling listen nonetheless, one that brings frequent unexpected twists and turns in the songs, with a delightful experimental streak that’s rarely heard in Indian film music.
