Nearly two years after he debuted in Bollywood with the Anushka Sharma-Diljit Dosanjh starrer Phillauri, composer Shashwat Sachdev gets to compose an entire soundtrack himself. Given that the man has delivered engaging numbers in all of his movies, even while being part of a crowd, is enough reason to keep listening to Uri’s music.
From its original folk version for the lovelorn, to becoming a pop song about the plight of NRIs – which in turn inspired another similar song from the 2010 movie Crook – ‘Challa’ gets a punchier, aggressive makeover in Uri. To be fair, this isn’t much of an adaptation in that aside of the central hook the song is pretty much composer Sachdev’s own. Even on the lyrical front, it is Kumaar’s (who incidentally was the writer of the Crook adaptation too) words that make up the majority of the song, rather than the traditional piece. Sachdev’s main man Romy leads the vocals in style, supported by Vivek Hariharan and the composer. The track ‘Jagga Jiteya’ is rather unremarkable but for Dee MC’s rap, even though it has Daler Mehndi’s vocal power on its side.
Things continue on a war footing in ‘Jigra’ sung by indie man Siddharth Basrur, and here too there isn’t much recall value in the melody itself, but a racy arrangement dominated by the guitars (Youngmin Kim and Sachdev) and percussion (Sivamani) make it a relatively more effective affair. While the tone mellows down in ‘Manzar Hai Yeh Naya’ (written by Abhiruchi Chand), the import remains that of the inspirational kind even here. Sachdev does a neat job with the orchestration and the use of the chorus is especially good. The lead singing by Shantanu Sudame though, is a bit of a letdown.
It is in the one song that moves away from the movie’s dominant theme that Sachdev delivers his best work of the album. ‘Behe Chala’ written by the movie’s second guest lyricist Raj Shekhar, who once again demonstrates his talent of using the simplest of words to make a profound impact. Sachdev, on his part, conveys the pensive tone brilliantly with a placid melody and an understated arrangement that once again finds the fabulous use of Kim’s guitars. A competent Yasser Desai handles the vocal department. It’s with ‘Behe Chala’ that Sachdev lives up to the promise of his talent even if the rest of the soundtrack doesn’t. It’s his best song to date.