{ that's zen, isn't it? Isn't it? }

Later today I might venture to do some real work, or at least some reading, but I'm so woesome about that stuff right now that I have to take a break already. So. My fannish update! No explicit spoilers, so no cuts.

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I spent yesterday evening catching up on some of the fandom I'd across the week. This week's Private Practice was really, really good and whilst I have a general fondness for the show, this I the first time I've watched an episode through and through without stopping to pause it half-way. So, huzzah.

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Also saw the latest Criminal Minds which was good, but not as good as the previous two episodes; I loved that opening scene in the pens with Reid, Morgan and Prentiss, and I thought that JJ's skirt was cute. I hope you weren't hoping for something substantial.

Life did a good job of expanding on an angst-plot that I thought was going to be bog-standard, but is actually a little more layered; I was more than a little impressed by Shahi's closing performance. The subplots were excellent, and I really wanted to hug Ted/Arkin's character; Lewis and Weigert played off one another beautifully, and I'd love to see more of that. I finally got around to watching the second-half of Women's Murder Club which turned out to be lovely. I wish the plots were stronger, but that was only the third episode, so I'll give it more time yet. Also: for Angie Harmon.

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BONES WAS SO GOOD! So funny, and a tiny bit creepy. I feel like episodes like this one epitomise what this show is about, and the vein in which you're supposed to take it - i.e. not at all seriously.

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I watched The Unit which was alternately terrible and excellent. A first I thought the plot with the singer was dumb, but it turned out okay (poor Charles; I love his character a lot); I enjoyed Bob's plot for the most part; I LOVED the thing with the bar woman and Hector, because although I find that whole situation horribly pressuring (with the wives and Bar Woman), I find Hector to be very charming. Mostly, I wish Tiffy would get a new fucking plotline, instead of recycling old ones, or just fuck off already because it's beyond boring.

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There's new Numb3rs but I still haven't seen last week's episode. This possibly calls for some marathoning tonight, because I have CSI and CSI:NY to watch, too. (Guys, I am irrationally excited about next week's CSI/WaT crossover, regardless of not knowing a thing about the latter post-early-S3.) Also: this week's Supernatural because the basic plot seems interesting, even though I don't have a clue what's going on in the season arc - and I'm quite happy to remain that way, actually, because I think my brain would explode if I tried to fall back into that show.

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Yeah, I've decided to drop Atlantis and marathon it over Christmas break instead.

{ I keep bleeding love. }

I totally bought Leona Lewis' single today.

Sigh.

I hate having shame about my pop love! I think it's mostly because people assume that if you like one pop-artist, you're into all of it which isn't true. I don't mind a lot of the mainstream stuff because I don't really know that it's happening - which is to say, I rarely listen to the radio anymore, and even when I do, it's Radio 2, and that station lands on the indie/folk/soul-pop side of things.

But I like a lot of pop music that I hear, in a kind of it's good in the background sort of way. It fulfils some basic musical needs for me: one, easy-listening repeated refrains. A lot of pop music is NOT about the lyricism; it's about a tune that is catchy, easy to listen to and is a quick mood-fix. Most of the music I listen to works on three levels - bass, melody and lyric - but pop music just doesn't work that way at all. Two: pop music is about voice in a very generic way. Pop music is about producing a listenable sound (yes, I realise that this is not actually a word, thanks).

I also feel that a lot of pop music is produced for an age-group that I no longer belong to, but I think that's an incorrect assumption because I know a lot of people who re older than me who love pop. So, I guess, pop music is something that I've mostly outgrown, and something I consign as a nostalgia trip when I bring it up again. I much prefer 80s/90s pop to contemporary pop, but I do link that music to specific periods of my life. Spice Girls (!!!) remind me of summer at my aunt's house with all of my cousins, and I was into Boyzone around that time, as well as Steps, the early S Club 7 stuff; Pink, Christina Aguilera, Westlife, Dido and a few others that I can't remember right now, were the people I was listening to until I was 16 which is when I started to phase that music out and take a more active interest in country/folk and Indie music (hai thar Ani DiFranco). But I was still into some of the more sophisticated stuff, like Natalie Imbruglia, old-school Nelly Furtado, and I've loved nearly everything Destiny's Child ever brought out.

I only really got into 'real' music - i.e. bands that play their own instruments, write their own songs - when I came to university, mostly because I spent most of my A-levels obsessing with American Indie music and getting to grips with that sound before coming back and looking at what British music had to offer, which was a good time for it because that was the time when we were finally getting the full-force effect of the musical backlash on pop contests, and the music scene was all about 'reality' (as opposed to produced music). So that's when I got into Coldplay's earlier stuff - when their third album came out, I was listening to the first, heh - Franz Ferdinand, and the bands that stepped up after that, The Killers, The Fray, and then back again to Snow Patrol. In the past few years, British female solo artists have made another return, and we're getting the most amazing music from the likes of artists like Corinne Bailey Rae, Lily Allen, KT Tunstall, all these different sounds, but definitely a female reaction to the band-mentality of 'reality' music which is predominantly male. I can't explain it, but the British music scene doesn't have bands like the Indigo Girls and so on; women break out on their own a lot, but I can't really name a popular female band. I want to say The Long Blondes but they haven't made it big, regardless of how fabulous their music is.

(UM. MY LANDLORD IS RIGHT OUTSIDE MY WINDOW. I LIVE ON THE FIRST FLOOR. ??)

But, yeah, I don't listen so much these days, but that's not to say there aren't some people I'd listen to. Sugababe's second (?) album had a lot of tracks on it that I enjoyed, and I'll be back for more Dido if she ever produces another record. I don't like Aguilera or Pink's new stuff, but they both had excellent second albums. Recently some of the later Girls Aloud stuff was good to listen to, and I know I totally ribbed that song with the ridiculous dancing, but I really enjoyed that song! And, well, I'm still a huge Céline Dion fan; I consider her one of the great divas, like Mariah, Whitney, old-school Madonna and so on.

Which is how we get to Leona Lewis.

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I don't watch any music/dance/model contest shows, but I did tune in to a couple of X-Factor episodes last year, and I watched a repeat of the final because the girl that won (Lewis) has the most fantastic voice I have heard in a long, long time. Guys! What happened to the divas? Because I feel like unless pop goes back to liking that style (which, I thought it might have done when Aguilera came back because that woman has a set of lungs on her like no other), Leona Lewis was born to the wrong generation. I only found out afterwards that the single she released post-show was a Kelly Clarkson cover (her second album - huh, this is a weird theme - is still a good listen), but I really love her rendition of it. (It's A Moment Like This for those that care.) But she has such a clear, strong voice, and she consistently hits every damn note.

Her new single is called Bleeding Love and it's got this bass beat that I honestly cannot get over. The pace is interesting because it's slower than most, but that bass/sync sound carries it, and the rhythm has a lot to do with the lyrical framing. The music and Lewis' voice remind me of that pop we got at the beginning of the 90s, just before The Spice Girls broke out and changed how women performed in pop music; and yet the style of the whole thing is very, very contemporary. The sound quality is as sharp as the first half of this decade, retaining that early simplicity and elegance of sound, without giving in to some of the scratchy/remixed vibe that contemporary pop music likes to play with. Unlike A Moment Like This, there's no classic-90s acceleration/shift-change at the last bridge (that was such a huge Westlife/Boyzone/boy band thing, and I love what it does, but it dates music a little) but the sound carries. This sounds like mature pop music, it's much more sophisticated than a lot of what is out there. The lyrics leave something to be desired, but they're more than passable, usual pop-fare (unlike Umbrella which needs to DIE).

But her voice is beautiful, and the sound is lovely. If I had a subwoofer, it would sound even better because the music would better be able to resonate around the room. It's different to most pop that's out there. Someone said that on first listen the song is disappointing but that it grew on them, and I think that's because if you go at it with the expectation that it's pop music, well, then it's going to disappoint a lot of those expectations because it really doesn't fall into a lot of the negative stereotypes that the word 'pop' brings up. MySpace has the song up here. I don't know that I'll like the album when it comes out, but the people she's been working with were once working with the divas (Celine, Whitney &c.) so I'm cautiously optimistic. Either way, the single is well worth listening to.

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I can't believe I just wrote a whole post on pop music. But if that's not your thing, Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin) and Alison Kraus brought out an album a week or so ago, and though I haven't heard all of it yet, what I have heard is brilliant.

{ raja hindustani. }

I'm watching last week's Numb3rs (4x05, Robin Hood) and I'm only part-through but the Amita(/Charlie) plotline would have helped massively if I'd watched the episode last week. SIGH. Except now it will help with the other Amita fic I'm writing (the first attempt for numb3rswom3n. I feel a little weird writing it because we've gotten a couple of mixed messages from Amita's storyline: season 1 she had that 'arranged husband' back in India, but season 2 she had distanced herself from the culture. These two things aren't incompatible but there is a small area in which they don't quite fit together. Unless— okay, unless she doesn't speak to her family a lot? But she lives close enough to her family that she can visit her traditional grandmother. My question re: her parents is: were they visiting India or were they coming to visit Amita? (Amita's family's characterisation is like that of a girl whose family is from Northern India, but season 2 implied that her family speaks Tamil which seems a little incompatible? Maybe? Although - actually, it depends on her family's class/caste status, and she said that her family comes from a village, so no, that does make more sense.)

Anyway, back to the episode.