Despite a minimal instrumental backing, Sanjay Leela Bhansali proves his arranging acumen in the ambient title song. The harmonica, the violin have all been perfectly placed to make the song instantly addictive. Also helping it on its way is the rendition by KK and Shail Hada. That said, one cannot ignore the resemblance to tracks from some of his older movies, particularlyHDDCS’s title song. Sau Gram Zindagi is a very 90s-sounding ghazal-based tune given a modern orchestral packaging, and coming inKunal Ganjawala’s voice it works quite well. Shail Hada reappears with Rakesh Pandit to deliver the poem-like Tera Zikr. Though the poem-line rules out an attractive tune for the song per se, SLB kind of makes it up with the arrangement. And wonderful singing by the vocalists, especially Rakesh.

And then things start going wrong. In Saiba, Bhansali’s attempt to fuse the Latino sound with Vibhavari Joshi’s semiclassical vocals falls flat. Somehow they don’t seem to meld well. KK’s Jaane Kiskesounds quite a bit like the title song in its general feel, but lacks the quality the latter has in orchestration. The only thing that keeps the track going is KK’s reliability. The composer bounces back with the next track, Udi, where the Arabic elements in arrangement make for a wonderful listen coupled with Sunidhi’s exuberance.

In Keh Na Sakoon SLB once again returns to the orchestral melancholic theme of arrangement and ends up being one too many in that line. Shail Hada does a good job behind the microphone but that is not enough to prop this one up. Chaand Ki Katori is an excellent display of Harshdeep Kaur’s vocal brilliance and it is her singing for major part that makes the song enjoyable.  Daayein Baayein sounds like a mellow version ofSaawariya’s title song and works in a similar manner, KK doing the honors for a third time. Dhundhli Dhundhli is credited to Shankar Mahadevan everywhere on the net, who the vocalist definitely is not.Roop Kumar Rathore may be. Apart from that conflict of facts I found nothing very interesting about the track, the orchestral arrangement getting way too tedious by now.

A decent debut as composer from Sanjay Leela Bhansali which would have been much better had he cut down on the number of songs, especially the similar-genre ones.  But that was the case with Saawariya too. One would have expected SLB to learn from his past mistakes. Hope he’s done that at least on the movie front.

Music Aloud Rating – 7.5/10

Recommended Tracks – Guzaarish, Udi, Chaand Ki Katori