VIENNA TENG
Whatever You Want
DOWNLOAD: Whatever You Want
I very rarely hear an artist for the first time and fall and hard as I did for Vienna Teng, but from the moment she opened her set with ‘Whatever You Want’ when she played with Over The Rhine earlier this week, I was hooked! Her slightly quirky, syncopated lyrical delivery, the delicately beautifully but complex rhythms and the totally amazing ways her crazy-talented producer, Alex Wong (and also her only backup musician) can turn a snare drum and a few other simple percussion instruments into an orchestra, all had me shaking my head in wonder. And while I’m tossing out compliments, I hear a lot of Aimee Mann in this girl, both in her vocal style and her smart lyrics. WIth all the amazing indie stuff flying at me from all directions, it has gotten a lot harder to truly impress me, but when her set was done I was moved enough to buy all four of her albums! ‘Whatever You Want’ is off of her 2006 release, Dreaming Through The Noise, but she’s touring now to promote her latest album, Inland Territory, and for all you List Members up in Boston, she’s are playing the Berklee Performance Center tonight! I don’t often push, but I really think this is a CD you should all buy immediately, if for no other reason than the outstanding ‘Grandmother Song’…..if you’re all nice I might feature that one next week…but in the meantime, I’m expecting all of you to head over to both her MySpace page and her Website and report back to me about what y’all think, and when you’re done with that, check out Alex’s other gig on The Paper Raincoat MySpace page.
Damn Ugly Photography 