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Inland Territory was ranked second in my Top Ten Albums I Wrote About in 2016
Should you need a moment this week to disengage — to distract, tame and collect your thoughts — I know a Taiwanese-American who would like to spend an hour of her time with you.
Inland Territory, the fourth album from erstwhile software engineer Cynthia Yih Shih is an oasis of calm. The deceptively simple character sketches that compose her prestigious discography are here allowed space to breathe and stretch, to mesmerising effect.
On 'Stray Italian Greyhound,' she looses a string of astonishingly apt metaphors for a sudden and unexpected love, underpinned by a piano's constant excited trilling. The grim smoulder of 'Watershed' has Teng step into the role of some imperious abstract gaia, flooding and scorching the world not out of rage or retaliation, but simple indifference. And most amusingly, 'Grandmother Song' translates a speech delivered at her in Mandarin voicing disapproval of Teng's abandonment of a lucrative career to pursue professional musicianship, set to a scrappy, clattery kitchen jig.
It is remarkable how much emotion Teng wrings out of such a measured and nonplussed delivery. Of course she composes these soothing melodies herself, all of which are carefully designed to flatter her voice sweet and low and tart and dry.
Vienna Teng is an unquenchable font of novelty to be sure, but one backed up by genuine substance. Her artful deployment of metaphor and her affection for phrases longer and knottier than many dare to write could in less skilled hands turn out music that is unappealing and cold. But Teng refuses to step on her own feet. On Inland Territory she wisely bows out of her own way, prioritising a smoother finish over her own ego in a way that few have the humility to do. Her previous album and her next, respectively the warm and introverted Dreaming Through the Noise and the bright and frantic Aims, are splendid works, but lack respectively the variety and the coherence that make Inland Territory so special.
Treat yourself. Vienna Teng is among the best America has to offer, and we deserve her.
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Should you need a moment this week to disengage — to distract, tame and collect your thoughts — I know a Taiwanese-American who would like to spend an hour of her time with you.
Inland Territory, the fourth album from erstwhile software engineer Cynthia Yih Shih is an oasis of calm. The deceptively simple character sketches that compose her prestigious discography are here allowed space to breathe and stretch, to mesmerising effect.
On 'Stray Italian Greyhound,' she looses a string of astonishingly apt metaphors for a sudden and unexpected love, underpinned by a piano's constant excited trilling. The grim smoulder of 'Watershed' has Teng step into the role of some imperious abstract gaia, flooding and scorching the world not out of rage or retaliation, but simple indifference. And most amusingly, 'Grandmother Song' translates a speech delivered at her in Mandarin voicing disapproval of Teng's abandonment of a lucrative career to pursue professional musicianship, set to a scrappy, clattery kitchen jig.
It is remarkable how much emotion Teng wrings out of such a measured and nonplussed delivery. Of course she composes these soothing melodies herself, all of which are carefully designed to flatter her voice sweet and low and tart and dry.
Vienna Teng is an unquenchable font of novelty to be sure, but one backed up by genuine substance. Her artful deployment of metaphor and her affection for phrases longer and knottier than many dare to write could in less skilled hands turn out music that is unappealing and cold. But Teng refuses to step on her own feet. On Inland Territory she wisely bows out of her own way, prioritising a smoother finish over her own ego in a way that few have the humility to do. Her previous album and her next, respectively the warm and introverted Dreaming Through the Noise and the bright and frantic Aims, are splendid works, but lack respectively the variety and the coherence that make Inland Territory so special.
Treat yourself. Vienna Teng is among the best America has to offer, and we deserve her.