Usthad Hotel – Music Review (Malayalam Soundtrack)

You can listen to the soundtrack here.

Wacky lyrics, a typical Malayali tune, and a rollicking Western arrangement highlighted by some crazy violin bits – Appangalembaadum is instant addiction. Anna Katharina Valayil is impeccable with her sprightly rendition, and her accent works perfectly for the lines. Anna joins Naresh Iyer in the second song Mel Mel, but here it is composer Gopi Sundar’s brilliant use of strings that rules all else. The final song Vaathilil Aa Vaathilil comes in one of the composer’s seemingly fav genres – maappilappaattu – and here too he lays out an exotic-sounding arrangement, while Haricharan does a neat job on vocals. The only problem – lack of much variation in the base tune makes it boring after a while. (An addendum as I came to know of a fourth song only later on) Finally there is Subhanallah where the composer provides a plucky Middle East-flavored, guitar-led template, and though the song seems to be a BGM piece, it does have an allure even without visuals primarily owing to the arrangement. Navin Iyer takes up the duty of rendering the sargam and does it quite well, but for his diction (pha instead of pa and gha instead of ga when singing swaras can sound quite irksome!).

Usthad Hotel – Another entertaining 3-song soundtrack from Gopi Sundar. And I hear he has done a brilliant job with the BGM as well. Good going!

Music Aloud Rating – 7/10