Vienna Teng Album: “Inland Territory”

If you've never heard Vienna Teng's rich blend of complex melody and gorgeous lyrics before, you're in for a real treat. If you have, you'll be delighted to hear that this album builds on the best of her prior works.

Vienna said it an interview that she wanted Inland Territory to sound like a mix tape, with smooth piano pop one song and a grand orchestral swell the next song and a loose folk tune the next. It's not a "mood" album the way Dreaming Through the Noise was, which, frankly, I really like; the songs sound and feel different, but each of them has the beauty of her song- and lyrics-writing and personality in them. She's done some terrific collaborations, too; I'm particularly in love with the harmony on "Antebellum" and the way it forms a solid baseline for Vienna's gorgeous voice. Slower songs like "Watershed" and "The Last Snowfall" contrast with rousing, toe-tapping tunes like "Grandmother Song," songs of heartbreak like "Antebellum" and of building hope like "Stray Italian Greyhound." Somehow it all forms a cohesive whole that adds up to one of the best albums I've heard in years.

I've been playing this album on repeat since I bought it, and I still can't figure out what my favorite song is; they're all just that good.

Right, so I'm a fan, and it would appear that I'm about to gush a little. I ask your forgiveness in advance.

Vienna Teng's 2002 debut blew me away. As with Sinead's "The Lion and the Cobra" and Tori's "Little Earthquakes," it was instantly apparent that we had something special on our hands. "Waking Hour" was just that good.

And then, like those two, she noodled a bit. She experimented, she branched out, and there were moments on albums #2 and #3 that worked spectacularly and moments that didn't. I kept waiting for the White Light.

Well, here it is. I'd like to think you'll know it when you hear it. For the first time over the course of 12 songs, I hear not just an extremely talented woman at her piano, but a band that happens to be led by a extremely talented woman at her piano. With a nod to the Tori fans, this is Vienna Teng's "Choirgirl" moment, and it's a jaw-droppingly beautiful thing.

There are no missteps here. The closest we get to that is the second-to-last track, "Radio," a what-if tale about a suicide bombing in San Francisco whose reach exceeds its grasp by maybe just a smidge. But look what else we get: haunting love ballads with ("St. Stephen's Cross") or entirely without ("The Last Snowfall") a little politics thrown in, cautionary tales ("Watershed"), playful reincarnation speculation ("In Another Life"), the funniest clap-and-stomp tribute to the generation gap you're likely to hear ("Grandmother Song")...

...and a melodic masterpiece called "Stray Italian Greyhound," which is all about how happy its narrator suddenly is and how much it annoys the living h*ck out of her. Seriously, if this world were truly just, "Stray Italian Greyhound" alone would conquer it on the next otherwise unoccupied spring day. If you do nothing else after reading this review, please go check that song out by the download means of your choice. Okay? Okay.

The first thing I noticed was that this was not your typical fits-in-a-category kind of music. Vienna sings and plays stories, observations, dreams and cultural comments, with uncommon sensitivity and awareness - not trying to turn these personal songs into the next big radio hit (which makes them all the more inviting). This is something you can play for your mother or best friend - they'll each like something different about it. Bottom line - buy this if you're looking for something more in music than you've been getting lately. Now I'm gonna have to pick up her entire catalog.

The first song I heard of Vienna Teng was her lullaby, Green Island Serenade, sung in Chinese, on Youtube. She immediately captured my attention then. A fine example of truly thoughtful and heartfelt music, her heart visibly resonates within each word and note of her songs.

This album is for me a continuation of the brilliance she showed in her previous album Dreaming Through the Noise. Though this album does not outshine Dreaming Through the Noise as my favorite one, it definitely has a solid spot in my heart.

If you're looking for music that will have you dreaming in vivid color (or perhaps vivid monochrome), then this is it.

The album itself is a beautiful collage of different styles and influences that have obviously significantly shaped the now New York based ex-San Francisco. The record was recorded over five months in four cities, which counts for the incorporation of many tastes and textures within her songs. A much widely varied and observant collection, it will surely take you along with her as she trudges on her tour.

To sample a few of my favorites:

(1) The Last Snowfall features her gentle vocals against keyboards, and bursts of background vocals. A very simple song but packs a vivid imagery of a winter day wherein perhaps you sit by the window and take a moment to think of your life and those you value. "If this were the last slow curling/Of your fingers in my palm/If this were the last I felt you breathing/How would I carry on?" -- the song should speak for itself.

(3) Antebellum, the first song that caught my attention in this album, is, as a friend of mine has pointed out, very American -- and most definitely not the bad way. It would fit right in with a movie, but it isn't painfully cliche. The lyrics are creatively crafted to portray its message, and the message itself is pretty powerful.

(4) Kansas, a slow and sleepy jazz, has a story of heartbreak and regret told in a gentle and nostalgic manner. It can be a beautiful piece to ferry you away into dreams. For me, a very visual person, I see yellow-and-brown photographs, afternoons in bed with coffee, walks under the burning colors of fall... very beautifully executed. It's not a song that will catch your eye immediately like Antebellum, but in itself it is beautiful.

(7) An amusing thing about the seventh song, Stray Italian Greyhound, is that it actually talks of Barack Obama. I never did expect that, but when I saw and heard her talking of it on a video I laughed and thought, "Well, of course, why didn't I think of that?" The song was about hope, she said, hope in hard times, rekindled even in a broke college graduate who just wants to lie back, already having decided to live with a cynical view of the world. Dogs can do that. Or foster children. A new friend. A book. This is a nicely done song, very poetic and one of the cruxes of her creativity, I think.

For those who are searching for something new, something that is not a heavily popularized bland and/or overused tune, something that can for a change spark a thought or a curl of emotion in your chest, this is it. Don't miss her; she's a very good artist, a promising one I look forward to hearing more from in the future.

Teng's arrangements on songs like "Antebellum" and "St. Stephen's Cross" have been described as similar to chamber music, but it seems to me more like the reposed beauty of a Vermeer painting. Like Vermeer's calmly splendid interior scenes, Teng's songs grab one with immediate fascination. Her voice is always sweet and reflective.

A common theme to the lyrics is ecological and social calamity. "The Last Snowfall," wonders aloud how one would see the world if one knew it would soon end (either because one was going to die, or because the world was ending). Taken alone, it would be a fine Unitarian hymn. In the album, it sets the tone. The next song, "White Light," addresses the destructive habits of modern individuals: "If you knew it was wrong, why did you do it?" "Antebellum" uses an analogy between damaged marriages and civil war; "No Gringo" describes a switching of places between the Anglo and Latino populations of Arizona (from the point of view of a young displaced Anglo). "Watershed" is a blunt warning of impending ecological disaster; "Just the Radio" of civil war, a la Sri Lanka. The other songs are more personal in theme, but even then include odd passages that refer to political crisis.

(In case the point is missed, the liner notes include a tribute to Jared Diamond, probably for *Collapse*.)

It's hard to imagine a thematically darker album than one organized around realistic scenarios for the apocalypse. Yet Teng makes it work artistically with complex, erudite allusions and exquisitely poignant orchestration. "Watershed" is one of the most terrifying songs I've heard; the music, perfectly attuned to the meaning of the lyrics, is like Sibelius' 1st symphony in its anguished grandeur. "St. Stephen's Cross" is tender relaxing of the tension in a ballad about a genuinely personal moment; it may be alluding to the fact that we are ultimately spectators in history after all, and actors only in the present.