When Sajid and Zeeshan first came on the Pakistani music scene, way back in 2006, the idea of desi musicians singing in a foreign language was relatively unheard of. Now, however, there are quite a few making the rounds on the internet and elsewhere. And they’re pretty good at it — case in point: Abdullah Siddiqui.

Sajid and Zeeshan is also the only two-member musical band in this country that does not require a traditional four-member set-up for performances. With Sajid Ghafoor on vocals, harmonica and on the rhythm, lead and, occasionally, bass guitar, and Zeeshan Parwez on the synthesiser, mouth-organ, keyboards, arrangements and production, you have the entirety of the eponymously-named band.

Their debut album, One Light Year at Snail Speed, was released 14 years ago, in 2006. It’s hard to imagine so much time has gone past. It feels like not too long ago that they made it to our TV screens with their hit song, King of Self. It was a different world back then.

They released their second album, The Harvest, five years later in 2011 and since then have been very quiet on the music front. This single — and the subsequent album — is nine years in the making. The whole music landscape has changed since then.

The band that put the city of Peshawar on the pop music map, Sajid and Zeeshan, is back after a hiatus of almost nine years. How does their latest song, Lighten Up, hold up?

Try as they might, very few artists from ‘back in the day’ are able to strike a chord with current audiences — mostly because they either stubbornly insist on sticking to their same old tried-and-tested and increasingly predictable and boring style, or any ‘innovation’ they do appears extremely shallow and rushed at best. A case of trying a little too hard.

One wonders how this duo will adapt to it. One half of the duo, Zeeshan Parwez, as a director and animator, has managed to reinvent and relaunch himself over the years, especially with his series of public service animations. It makes one a bit more confident that Sajid and Zeeshan might pull off this re-launch into Pakistan’s musical landscape.

Their comeback single, Lighten Up, evokes nostalgia. Lots and lots of it. There’s that signature acoustic-merged-with-electronic sound. It is coincidentally, the sound or genre being followed by popular artists nowadays, with their own spin to it, that has always been a hallmark of Sajid and Zeeshan’s body of work.

It’s a light preppy number, something you can thump your feet to. In keeping with the times, there’s a distinctly 1980s vibe to the song. In terms of the main message of the song, Lighten Up sounds a bit like what King of Self was communicating to audiences.

Take the main chorus from Lighten Up: “Lighten up, find your tune and then you raise the bass and join your own beat. Blasting space, swing within to your sound, stay with it, it has set you free.”

And here’s the one from King of Self: “Throw away that bag of gold. Listen to what your music holds. It’s a melody only you can feel. You’re about to be the king of self.”

Which goes to show that, over time, some things never change. Lighten Up reminds me so much of a song from the pre-90s era but I haven’t been able to figure out which one, yet. On the songwriting front, we’ve gotten better from the duo. Lighten Up isn’t bad, but it’s not their best. It isn’t earth-shattering or life-changing. One can’t accept any less from this band.

I was going through some old notes and realised I’d written about how Zeeshan can sing, really. “His vocal-talents are not limited to singing mock-raags while amongst friends now and then, he really can sing. He provided the backing vocals to Sajid’s powerhouse performance in — most notably — Freestyle Dive and a couple of other songs.” Let’s hope we see more of him — vocally — in the upcoming album.

Published in Dawn, ICON, July 19th, 2020