Ahmedabad musician Chirag Todi is a name everyone knows by now. Besides his numerous releases, he's also one of the more involved members of the Indian indie community as a whole. So, it is not necessarily much of a surprise that his album ‘Bangers Only’ (finally a good title with a sense of humour). It is surprising, though, that it's said to be his debut. Well, it kind of isn't. Not really.

The album has ten songs on it, and these are they: 'Spiced Lemonade' (from 2023), 'Love Nobody' (from 2022), 'Cross The Line' (from earlier this year), 'Ooty Dreams', 'Walking On a Minefield', 'Saaya', 'Paper Boats' (from 2022), 'Yearning' (from 2023), 'Jag Jaage' (from earlier this year), and 'Crafted Lies'. So, besides four tracks, every other song on here has been put out as a standalone single over the last two or more years with its own promo run. So, if you think about it, this is a debut EP glued to a compilation EP. This brings potential problems with it, all of which Chirag navigates with ease because (a) he's a good artist and (b) the music is consistent. Let's get into it, then, shall we?

Technical sonic discussions are completely unnecessary in this case. Chirag and his collaborators in Ahmedabad’s thriving scene (via the unable-to-miss folk at Compass Box) have been making expertly produced and recorded music for what seems like years now. So, yeah, all of it sounds top-shelf. So, the ten tracks... We're going to cover them out of order.

New stuff first. ‘Ooty Dreams’ features MS Krsna and Pushkar Srivatsal, and it's... a bonafide banger (sigh). There's a groove heavy enough to cause a minor head injury, some pop vocals (in Tamil, nice one), and the track ends a shade after two minutes so that you don't get a concussion. 'Walking on A Minefield' is basically genetically engineered to be a sing-along on his upcoming tour; peak pop-rock, short solos and all. Chirag is actually a restrained but very tasteful guitarist, a talent he shows here. Next up is 'Saaya', which is the album's standout track. There is perhaps no clearer example of the concept of execution being as important as ideas. It’s a warm and sweet Hindi pop ballad with a simple arrangement and melody, but it's done so well that you kind of forget about words like 'stereotype' and 'pigeonhole' because it's just a really nice song. The last new bit of material is ‘Crafted Lies’, which is a standout for slightly different reasons; a bit of hard rock with great chords, a lush sound, and vocals from Siddarth Basrur (which are phenomenal, but we expect that too). There is a point where the song suddenly shifts into a heavier atmosphere; riffs galore, huge drums and basically everything diametrically opposite to all the music before it. But it's a solid enough tune, so it gets a pass. The remaining six tracks on the album are as good as they were when released earlier, so we don't need to add anything there, do we?

While this is a sort of balance sheet of all the artists Ching Todi has worked with of late and his ability to make good stuff with them all, ‘Bangers Only’ does suffer from flow problems and is not the smoothest listening experience. However, every song on this tracklist lives up to the name. So if approached the right way, this is a very solid and high-quality album. Well, ‘album’.