Inland Territory

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.

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). 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.

"Inland Territory" somehow caught my eye in a music magazine, enough to check out samples online and at Vienna's website. My order went in immediately for this disc, my introduction to this artist. Quite simply, "Inland Territory" is a breathtakingly varied, complex and moving piece of music. "White Light" bubbles with a catchy hook. "Antebellum" amazes with its gorgeous melody, counter-melody and build, "I know the border lines we drew between us, keep the weapons down, keep the wounded safe, I know our antebellum innocence was never meant to see the light of our armistice day." "In Another Life" starts off sounding like Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" before adding a Dixieland piano roll that musically sounds joyful while Teng's lyric is darkly serious, "In another life, you & I were Red Guards in training side by side, We marched on Tianamen, turned our own parents in for hoarding rice in the Great Leap Forward; we crawled on our bellies & died and a blood orange sky gave a cry." The rhythms on "Grandmother Song" set my toes tapping even as the lyrical message of self-worth packs a punch, "The one thing they can't take away from you is your mind and the education you've been through; So you find a man who understands that too, Make sure he stays true, gives respect where it's due, Make sure he knows what he's got in you." "Radio" sets a lovely melody against Kevin Rice's hyperactive pots & pans percussion with Teng's lyrical complexity, "Gunfire at freeway exits, bridges made barricades; I can feel the fog creeping, God where's the morphine?" Everything is right with this disc from Vienna's musical vision to Shannon Stamey's lovely cover art to the ecopak packaging. Bravo!