A Restless Mind

Since I don't review music anymore, I am going to try to give a little update of what catches my ear as regularly as I can!

There hasn't been a lot of good Indian music lately, so I have been listening to mostly Western music. Green Day have always been one of my favourite rock bands and their new album, 21st Century Breakdown, released some months ago is , well, rocking! East Jesus Nowhere was the song which dominated my playlist for a while. It's got the typical heavy drums and awesome vocals and lyrics by Billy Joe Armstrong. The album is very good overall, all the 18 songs are very enjoyable.

Another rock album I listened to A LOT was Kasabian's West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum. It not only has a magnificent title but a few very decent tracks too! It is Kasabian's first album in 3 years, after the incredible Empire and you can see that they have been meticulous with this album. Kasabian are well-known for their very unconventional music and they never cease to amaze. Two of the songs I constantly listened to are Fire and Underdog. I have embedded a video clip of Underdog at the bottom of this post. Please do check it out!

I also recently bought my first movie soundtrack cds: Pan's Labyrinth and Wall-E. And I must say, they are both amazing masterpieces. Spaniard Javier Navarrete composed the Academy Award-nominated score of Pan's Labyrinth. I am a massive fan of the movie which I have probably seen 5 times and the music was just seeping through my body. Pan's Labyrinth is a scary and tragic fairytale and the score really takes the movie to the next level. Wall-E's score is by the ridiculously talented Thomas Newman (who also composed the music of Finding Nemo, American Beauty and The Shawshank Redemption among others) who has never won an Academy Award despite being nominated an incredible 10 times! His performance for Wall-E almost won him his first this year, but he was narrowly beaten by Rahman. Wall-E is one of the most poetic and enchanting score I have ever listened to. The movie itself is quite deep and touching. Peter Gabriel's Oscar-nominated song 'Down to Earth' is a tremendous song which is my personal pick from the album. I highly recommend these two soundtracks!

Last but not least, only two Bollywood albums have really impressed me recently. The first one is Gulaal, with music by composer Piyush Mishra. Most of the songs are more like mantras and anthems. You judge a movie souundtrack by the way it captures the essence of the movie itself and Gulaal does that wonderfully. You might not enjoy it if you haven't seen the movie, but I have and I thoroughly loved the soundtrack. The second one is Kaminey, the hotly-awaited (by me atleast!) Vishal Bhardwaj flick. The Shakespeare fan also composes for his movies and he is as good at music as he is at directing. The new album is in stark contrast with Omkara. The latter was more melodious and slow while Kaminey is more pulsating and hip. Dhan Te Nan is already a massive hit, and the title song, sung by Bhardwaj who is also an amazing singer is very soothing and likeable. The album as a whole is not as impressive as his Omkara, but with time, I am pretty sure I will listen to it more and more.

It turned out to be quite a long update! More updates in a few months' time!