Its Prateek versus Jaimin

Barrack Obama was a great President and more than that a brilliant orator and an incredibly inspiring human being. His words have affected the global economy, and he mattered so much to global cooperation and diplomacy that he was handed out a Nobel Peace Prize back in 2009. These are quite understandable but his words put an Indian singer on the global map and skyrocketed him to celebrity status. Prateek Kuhad is the singer-songwriter whose Cold/mess was a recommendation by Obama as a part of his 2020 must-listen playlist.  

It was a lovely song that could cradle you away to sleep, enhancing the level of tranquillity. Ever since Prateek has never looked back and risen in stardom and success. I love a story like that where a new star is born out of nowhere and the lustre incrementally keeps getting stronger. Some of them could fade away, and some never reach that destination that the world and fans predict. If I was being honest, I believe Prateek belongs to this category of popular A-listers who just struggle to live up to that expectation. 

I have nothing against Prateek Kuhad and I'll be more than willing to give my unbiased honest opinion of his songs, but when the world goes gaga over someone, I will not stand by and join the herd. This article is going to be a brief review of Prateek's "The way that lovers do" (TWTLD), trying to analyse the overall album, and I'll also be recommending my favourite tracks from it. But how good is any criticism, without a solution or an alternative? This is why I'll be reviewing and recommending an alternate album by the singer-songwriter Jaimin called "Cutting Loose". 

TWTLD would get a score of 6.25/10 in my opinion, and out of the 11 tracks, I liked 4 tracks. My favourites were 'Bloom', 'Just a Word', 'CO2' and 'Favourite Peeps' and I strongly recommend these numbers for some fine singing, lyrics and instrumental arrangements. I could feel love and romance all through my veins when I heard 'CO2', and the song comes off like some fabulous numbers by Keane like 'Everybody's Changing'. 'Bloom' probably stands out as the best track where Prateek showcases his vocal range better and the interplay of Pianos, vocal harmonies and trumpets is just brilliant. 'Just A Word' has a very hummable segment and ring to it with some nice Keyboards to keep you hooked and finally 'Favorite Peeps' has a nice catchy tune aided by good guitar riffs and lyrics. Other than these 4, every other track is passable and you can skip them. 

Now take Jaimin's 'Cutting Loose' which has 14 songs on the album. I would gladly give it a 7.5/10 and recommend that all music lovers check out the whole album. 7 of the 14 are terrific songs creating pure bliss and with 50% of the songs qualifying to be good enough to be on my weekly charts.  This is much better than a mere 25% for Prateek's TWTLD. Another area where Jaimin scores better is that 6 songs are so good that they would get 8/10 and these are "Shes running late", "Never Mind", "One more night", "She", "Something here to stay", "Wore my heart on my sleeve". The two best numbers that would any day qualify among the best numbers of 2022 are " She" and "Something Here to Stay". 

Jaimin soars as a vocalist and to me, he wins hands down over Prateek in his abilities as a performer. There are many times I felt that Prateek sounded weak, with no conceivable emotion or even vocal presence. The emotional connection in Jaimi's album is stringer and it is some mind-blowing live instrumental arrangements that steer me towards Jaimin's album over Prateek's.  One has to just closely listen to the writing in "She" and it is a work of a genius in that number along with some glorious Solo on Violins. The commonly found awesomeness in each of these tracks in "Cutting Loose" is the Piano, Organ, Violin(Protyay Chakraborty), Drums (Arjun Chakraborty) and harmonies. The use of the Sitar(Kalyan Majumdar) and Saxophone (Abhay Sharma) in "Something here to stay" will make you go crazy in love for music, and you will close your eyes and lose your senses in the electric guitar solo in " Wore my heart on my sleeve"

I have no intention of pitching Jaimin against Prateek, and it is not a silly competition that I am trying to brew. All I am trying to do here is, to encourage my readers and music lovers to go check out Jaimin's album. If you love Prateek Kuhad, I am sure you will find Jaimin equally poignant and lovable. Jaimin Rajani, the Kolkata-based musician brings in a huge array of Indian talent like Rahul Ram, Rohan Ganguli, William Walters and Ralph Pais as bassists, Arjun Chakraborty on drums and percussion along with Aniruddha Saha, Abhay Sharma on the Sax, Billy Cardine on the Dobro Slide Guitar, Subharaj Ghosh on guitars and bass, Deepak Castelino on the classical guitar, Kalyan Majumdar on Sitar, Arka Chakraborty on Piano, Organ, bass Patrick Fitzsimons on Mandolin, Protyay Chakraborty and Rjarshi Das on Violin etc. The list of Vocalists for harmonies is Protyay, Rajshekhar Banerjee, Susmit Bose and Bhibhubrata Acharjee. 

All songs are composed, written and performed by Jaimin who also plays the guitars, with mixing and mastering by Protyay.