Karwaan – Music Review

There is a certain sound one associates with road movies. It is the kind of sound you wish to listen to while you are driving along a long highway yourself. One has decent expectations from the music of ‘Karwaan’ as the trailer was quite impressive and suggested there should be some scope for music in this film in which three characters embark on a journey together. There was a glimpse of a pleasant sounding track, sung by Arijit Singh, in the trailer too.

“Chota Sa Fasana” kick-starts the album on just the right note. This is the kind of song you would like to play on a loop while you are driving around with your loved ones on a breezy morning or a sunny afternoon. Writer-director pens down the song himself while Anurag Saikia adorns it with a tune. Arijit Singh sings it with a nice, positive energy and that makes it a wholesome affair.

Prateek Kuhad assumes the triple role of a singer, lyricist and composer for “Saansein”. Though the song has a nice and pleasant feel to it, it does not really stay with you after you have finished listening to it. Prateek does an okay job in all the three departments and does not really come up with something exciting here. The track ends up sounding like one of those tracks that amateur musicians put up on YouTube. He gives a better account of himself in “Kadam” than he did in “Saansein”. Though the track is far from being memorable, it has a soothing sound to it accentuated by a gently played acoustic guitar.

After “Chota Sa Fasana”, Anurag Saikia puts together another hummable track in the form of the interestingly titled “Heartquake”. Akarsh writes this one too and despite a few grammatical mistakes (it should have been ‘kaayanat hili’instead of ‘kaayanat hila‘), he writes some simple lines that complement the mood of the song. Papon’s lively singing is clearly the highlight of the song. The song is peppered with some tabla beats and sarangi that gel well with the more prominent modern orchestration. The alternate version titled “Heartquake (Aftershocks)” has a mix of different sounds that do not stick together very well.

SlowCheeta and Shwetang Shankar try to do too many things with “Dhaai Kilo Bakwaas” and the track, unfortunately, ends up living up to its title. The song has a narrative structure to it wherein it includes a rap portion and some quirky lines intended at generating humour but nothing really works. The lyrics (SlowCheeta) are quite abysmal.

Imaad Shah pays homage to the jazz-inspired Hindi songs from the 50s and the 60s with “Bhar De Hamaara Glass”. The track has been rendered with just the right amount of sass by his frequent collaborator Saba Azad. The two of them who are a part of a band called Madboy/Mink have created film songs like “Kolkata Kiss” (‘Detective Byomkesh Bakshy’) in the past. Imaad also arranges and programs the song himself and lends a wonderful jazz based background to the track.

The music of “Kaarwan” has its moments. At least half of the album manages to impress while the other half does not.