I've come to believe that where you are when you first listen to an album can have a profound impact on the memories that you associate with it. That's not to say that an album listened to in the wrong context can't later be redeemed - but love at first listen is not an easy thing to come by. One good example of this theory is Dreaming Through the Noise, the third album by mesmerizing singer/songwriter Vienna Teng. Depending on your definition, the first time I heard this album was either in a dimly lit bar called the Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles, or while hiking through a Hawaiian forest in light rain. And both settings were wonderfully appropriate for this lush but intimate album. Some parts of it are playful - even flirtatious - and other parts are quiet, pensive, even somber. Nearly all of it is a tour de force of exquisite, organic musicianship - mostly strings, percussion and upright bass arranged around the central piano - married to clever songwriting that explores love, its boundaries, and the barriers that keep us from fully experiencing it. Given the attention to detail that making it required, it would have been a disservice to Vienna if my first listen had been inside a noisy vehicle during rush hour, wouldn't it?

I've been a fan of Vienna's music for over three years now, and during that time, she's grown in her quiet way, moving from the classicist melodies often performed by just her voice and a lone piano on Waking Hour, to experimentation with poppier and more acoustic styles in some places on Warm Strangers (though those descriptions hardly do justice to either album), finally settling on more of a nightclub band-oriented, sultry sound for Dreaming Through the Noise. The change isn't a total shock, and I don't even know if calling it "growth" is exactly right - each album has sounded incredible in its own way, so I guess it's more of a lateral shift. But it's notable that she can make such a shift and not settle for recycling tried and true methods - she's the type of songwriter who isn't content to write the same song twice. That might mean that the more hushed tone and slightly darker themes of this album might bother those looking for another "Harbor" or "Lullabye for a Stormy Night", but then again, it might draw in some who thought the previous albums were too slick and dainty in places. (Not that it was ever all sunshine and rainbows, though - songs like "Between", "My Medea", and "Passage" will attest to that.) The most obvious comparisons may have once been Sarah MacLachlan and Tori Amos, but now she's edging into territory closer to that of Fiona Apple and Norah Jones (probably not as sullen and bitter as the former, but also not as lightweight as the latter), as well as a few understated jazz singers and instrumentalists that I couldn't name because I suck when it comes to knowing stuff about jazz.

If there's one flaw to this album, it might be that the touch is too light. Vienna's never been known for having upbeat albums with songs that rock out or anything, but in the past there's generally been a good balance between the intimate songs and the ones that sound really "big". DTTN feels at times like it's never loud enough to make out all of the nuances, no matter how loud you turn it up (unless you're wearing headphones, I suppose, but even then some of the instruments feel a bit dampened). On the plus side, this means that Vienna's wispy voice doesn't get drowned out by overbearing instruments (her piano sometimes does, but it may have been a conscious choice to not always give that instrument the primary focus), but on the minus side, it can take some of the climactic effect out of a song that is meant to be either really romantic, really sad, or just a whole lot of fun. As a result, this one might be the weakest of her three albums so far. The fact that I'm still rating it 5 stars (4.5 rounded up) should tell you something about those other two albums! (You might think I'm being a fanboy for not dropping this rating to 4 stars, but trust me, the versatility shown by this album far outweighs its small flaws.)

Blue Caravan
He said "go where you have to, for I belong to you until my dying day"
So like a fool, blue caravan, I believed him and I walked away...
Alright, so I'm sure many rock & roll fans out there have gotten bass lines stuck in their heads on numerous occasions. I certainly have. But when was the last time you got a cello line stuck in your head? This might be a first, folks. A musical idea submitted by Vienna's on-tour cello player, Marika Hughes, became the basis for this track - an ominous rhythm of cello plucking that bubbles underneath the entire song, which is one of those "road songs" dedicated to missing a special someone while traveling. Except it's a bit more melancholy than that, as Vienna asks her "blue caravan" (probably one of those shuttles that takes you to and from the airport, but that's not nearly as poetic of a description) to take her a special man whom she feels like she hasn't seen in years. There's just one little problem - in the second verse, he's revealed to have bailed on the relationship, after encouraging her to go out and have her little adventure and saying he'd wait for her. (So much for the promise made in "Harbor", I guess.) Actually, there's an even bigger problem - by the end of the song, she remembers that "he is a beautiful fiction I invented to keep out the cold". He doesn't even exist! DOH! Part of me feels like there should be an instrumental climax in between the second and third verses - there's a brief, pretty, vocal breakdown, but the song just keeps rolling along where it seems like it should build and then fall away. This might make the song more of a "Hmm." than a "Wow!", and it's damned odd as an opener, but it's still quite memorable.

Whatever You Want
She goes on curating your domestic museum
She disappears in her loyalty
She is a dress wearing a face in the doorway
Opening her arms out to you...
I suppose every unorthodox album needs a pop song or two. I can't blame Vienna for that - she's written some fine ones in the past, and none of them have been run-of-the-mill. While the more upbeat rhythm and the seemingly joyful piano intro might appear to signal a cute love song on the horizon, this one's actually a much trickier affair. Vienna sets up the scenario of a businessman who excels at massaging the numbers and playing the "yes" man, and for some songwriters this might lead into a typical tirade on greed, but Vienna cleverly dodges this when she moves into a second verse about a lonely wife at home. A normal songwriter would use that second verse to further indict a stock "suit" sort of character, but Vienna instead shows us how this woman is choosing her own imprisonment with those three demure little words - "whatever you want". And this situation somehow implodes upon itself in the bridge, which details her "setting a fire", a metaphor for some unknown action being taken that apparently tears down the entire operation. I haven't figured it out yet. What's truly genius here is the music, which could so easily do the normal bouncy piano-pop thing, with the pleasant catchy melody and the drums happily tick-ticking along with the chorus and all that. However, the delivery of that simple chorus - "Whatever you want, whatever you want, whatever you want is fine by me" - deliberately throws off the 4/4 rhythm by only lasting 7/8 and then starting again. Just to be even more subversive, the strings are being stroked back and forth on every third eighth note, so you get three competing rhythms that somehow cycle back around and meet up with each other. "Harbor" was determined to be the pop single that played with odd time signatures, but "Whatever You Want" might be even more dastardly due to how it does all of this within the supposedly comfortable boundaries of 4/4.

Love Turns 40
She's holding a secret that she'll never tell
Because we were once cinema gods in the night
And now all we've got is lunch-hour light
Where nothing photographs well...
"She's holding a secret that she'll never tell..." So goes the flirtatious whisper of a vocal that opens this song, along with a faint but undeniably sexy bass line. Lots of songwriters have written about the struggle to stay in love, and some have written about being a celebrity in love, but I'm not sure I've heard many songs about aging celebrities trying to keep the fires of romance burning when they're well past their prime. Vienna has a thing for looking ahead and trying to imagine the perspective of those older than her, I guess (see "Decade and One" from Waking Hour). The tone of this unapologetically jazzy tune actually reminds me of something that Over the Rhine might come up with, as a desperate woman tries to talk herself out of leaving her husband in the dead of night. It's an extremely well-written lyric, right down to the final realization in the chorus - "Love turns 40, and morning comes" - which seems to indicate that the arrival of a new day somehow provides assurance and neither of them has given up on the other yet. The song has a beautiful coda, which finds the strings swelling as Vienna's wordless vocals repeat a piano line that she had been using earlier, and finally this fades to an outro of bass and light, clicking percussion (first time I heard that clicking, I honestly thought it was an insect out in the woods instead of something on the CD, because it took a minute to realize that it was actually following a rhythm), while the strings once again exercise their right to strike in patterns of 3 against a 4/4 rhythm.

I Don't Feel So Well
I saw it begin to dawn on us both
And somehow it wasn't surprising
And so you're preparing to swear every oath
But all the while, I'm realizing...
Vienna wrote this song after being chastised by a grammar teacher who explained to her the difference between "well" and "good" - you do things well, but you don't feel well. This prompted a lyric that actually deals with the action of feeling - in other words, saying "I don't feel so well" doesn't mean that one is physically sick or emotionally distressed, but rather that one is not very capable of processing emotions properly. Hey, it sounds like as good an excuse as any to write a tango-inspired romp (or bossa nova or whatever the heck this is) about a girl who is basically a player - she meets guys and has a good time with them, and then disappears because she can't handle the commitment. Hey, at least she's nice enough to warn this particular guy that she's a heartbreaker ahead of time! I love the playful, descending melody of the verse, which states "I don't feel so well" and later becomes "I don't call them back" and finally "I can't love you there", quickly adding "I thought that you should know, I thought that you should know", which follows an odd melody that shouldn't quite work but does, in its attempt to get back to where it started. This whole song is a bit of a careful but dizzy dance, with the piano and strings getting wonderfully melancholy solos during the bridge, and even an accordion popping out for an unexpected surprise at one point. It's a potpourri of bitter sweetly romantic sounds, sort of the anti-"Unwritten Letter #1". And I love it so.

City Hall
Been ten years waiting, but it's better late
Than the never we've been told before
We can't wait one minute more...
Well, if this one gets released as a single (it's purported to be the album's second release after "Whatever You Want", if anyone of note is even playing that one in the first place), it might be the song that finally gets Vienna a ton of attention. I'm not sure if that sort of attention would be the best kind for her, as it might result in some incorrect labeling, but then again, it's a good song and it deserves to be noticed. Did I mention that it's the album's first truly happy love song? Man, the joy just spills over from this one. It's a lightly bouncy piano-pop tune, with slight country overtones, about a couple taking a seemingly spontaneous vacation during which they decide to go get their marriage license from City Hall and finally tie the knot after a good ten years or so of being in love. There's a wistful, informal feel to the song, and the "Oh-whoa-whoa" in the chorus makes it a sure-fire sing-along - even a clap-along if performed live (at one point, there's literally nothing but Vienna's voice and a tambourine as she leads into the final chorus). This all sounds harmless enough, so why do I think this one might get so much attention? Well, let's just say that after two spins or so, it finally hits you what "hilly seaside town" they're driving to "in the rainfall", why they had to wait ten years to get married, why their romance upset their parents, and why someone might try to take away what they have in the not-to-distant future. And I'll give Vienna a ton of credit for handling a controversial topic in such a light-hearted way that never once makes an explicit, pandering political statement - she just lets the story be what it is, and it's incredibly compelling. But you can see how, if this song got Vienna some exposure, she might be pigeonholed as a champion for a cause she's only written one song about, and she might get some flak from those who disapprove of the type of relationship portrayed here. I enjoy the song quite a bit, save for one point where the tempo lags a bit. But all the same, there are a few friends that I won't rush to explain the meaning of the song to.

Nothing Without You
It's the crowded room that breaks me
Everybody looks so luminous, and strangely young
It's the crowded room that's never heard
No one here can say a word of my native tongue...
This was the one song that I didn't hear performed live at the preview show I attended before the album came out. I was worried that a Vienna song with such a cliched title might turn out to be the one song not worth previewing, but thankfully, I was wrong and this is a lovely tune. It's probably the most traditional "love song" on the project, gently brushing its way along and expressing a simple desire for companionship with someone whose absence leaves her feeling broken. It's the subtle twists and turns of the melody, the gentle loveliness of Vienna's voice as she hit's the high notes, and the eloquent verses that make this song work so well. Everything works out in such a way that what might seem ordinary on paper hits line a ton of bricks when the words gently float through the speakers: "I am nothing with you... but I don't know who you are." Dang it, I'm a married man and I no longer have to imagine who "the one" will be or what she will look like, etc. But these "fictitious lover" songs still get to me after all these years.

Transcontinental, 1:30 A.M.
Wait, my love
I haven't got time in my life to watch you drift away
But I've all kinds of time
All kinds of time, if you'll stay...
This time around, the "barrier" to love (it seems there's one expressed in every song) appears to be physical distance, as Vienna evokes a "quiet storm" sort of mood, like something you might hear on a jazz station while driving in the rain in the middle of the night. Lyrically, it's pretty simple, with the line "Wait my love" showing up quite a bit and Vienna persuading a lover on the other end of the imaginary phone line not to hang up. I might have the same problem that I had with "Blue Caravan" in terms of there being a lack of "rise and fall", but damn if I'm not enthralled by the minor-key moodiness (lots of unexpected, but satisfying, shifts in the dark bass and piano chords here) and the muted trumpet solo. Again I'm reminded of Over the Rhine - fans of their songs "Lifelong Fling" and "Little Did I Know" would probably fall in love with this one.

1Br/1Ba
My little flock of boxes and I
Surrounded by a painted-white unknown
Soon as this wall in my heart comes down
I'm gonna make it feel like home...
That title reads "One bedroom, one bath", for those of you who haven't had to slave away over newspaper clippings and click around on Craig's List and make tons of phone calls trying to find that perfect apartment. This song apparently details the place Vienna moved to after losing her standoff with "Mission Street", and by all accounts, it was still a tough adjustment. Hearing this one live might be the only time I've laughed out loud during one of Vienna's songs - we find ourselves amused by things like "parking space for extra fee" and "my upstairs neighbors are making sounds I never want to hear" because they're all too true. (That last line reminds me, have you ever heard a violin having an orgasm before? I'm telling you, this stuff is groundbreaking.) The song is a definite break in the melancholy mood of the album, putting her back in the coffeehouse, "tell normal life like it is" mode, but that doesn't mean she can't experiment musically - the piano serves as percussion throughout much of the song with its two notes and lots of empty space in between (I actually liked it better in concert when she would tap on the piano lid to fill in those spaces and keep time), the strings stab and wriggle about, and the drums lightly tap and click along, just to remind us of how Spartan her new existence is. (Actually, I kind of found myself wishing for more of a driving beat here, especially during the instrumental breakdown where the piano becomes a lot more fluid and playful. The lack of strong percussion compromises the song, but it doesn't ruin it.)

Now Three
Love, love, love is a word so small
Let it fill up, up, up 'til I can't see at all
I want to be blind, only my hands to guide me
Bring all of you inside me...
This song is pretty much all piano and strings - no percussion. It doesn't need it actually - Vienna fills the void quite nicely with her glimmering piano triplets. Yes, that's a musical pun - just like "Between", this song is all about threes. We've returned to the land of the cryptic, so interpretation is a bit hard to come by here, but during this song's brief three (!) minutes, we learn that there are now three people where there were once two, and Vienna wants to be filled up with love - for this new person and for the world - until it blinds her. I'm confused, but it's all very poetic. It might be the brevity of this song that keeps it from being one of my favorites, but it's still very interesting.

Pontchartrain
Sunday: Dark water draining north
The heat swells and bursts like plague
Sunday: Ever-so-faint slow tambourine
Glides onward toward the grave...
Ready for the album's emotional climax? Oh, you say you are. But you're not. Just like "Passage", this one's probably going to catch you off guard and make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. You'll have to listen a little more carefully to get that effect, since a lot of the lyrics are delivered in a hush, somber tone and there's no "I died in a car crash" to jump right out at you and sum up the tragedy. This is more of a free-verse type of song, a slow, reflective piano dirge that ripples like a calm lake after a tragic storm. The lake in question is what the song is named after, of course (it's the lake in New Orleans that spilled over and drowned a lot of people after Hurricane Katrina, for those who are geographically challenged), and Vienna serves as a ghostly voice from the other side, describing "haunted bones without names" and asking the dangerous socio-political question - "Who drew the line between you and me?" (Meaning, who chose who would live and who would die in this ugly tragedy?) It would be easy to go the sentimental route, like a lot of 9/11 and Katrina-related songs have done. But, while sad, Vienna takes a completely different approach, employing an eerie, creeping melody that seems to slither up and down over intervals that shouldn't work out harmonically, but do. There's a break in the middle where multiple copies of Vienna's voice act as a choir, asking the beloved who is still alive to "Lie of our reunion", before returning to the song's main rhythm and melody, underneath which the strings are wriggling about nervously and an accordion can be heard, like an echo of the vibrant city life buried underneath all of that dark water. It's one of those songs where it's tough to say you "enjoyed" it due to how somber it is, but it definitely leaves a strong impression. Some might find it morbid; I think it's brilliant, and a fitting memorial.

Recessional
Who are you, taking coffee, no sugar?
Who are you, echoing street signs?
Who are you, the stranger in the shell of a lover
Dark curtains drawn by the passage of time?
It's interesting how the last line of "Pontchartrain" describes an "ever-so-faint slow tambourine marching back through time", and then the album closes with this song, which is a love story told in reverse. I only know this because Vienna described it as such in concert - all I can gather from the lyrics themselves are disjointed bits of thoughts and conversations between two lovers. At the beginning, they do seem to be grappling with whether they want to be together, and the questions they ask of each other at the end do seem to be more "getting to know you" type questions. Much like "Decade and One", the song does feel a bit disjointed and even random at times - the touch is so light that the song could almost disintegrate at any moment. There are some lovely moments like the Sufjan Stevens-esque trumpet that calls out between verses and the vocal crescendo after the final verse. Still, three slow, sparse songs in 3/4 time are a bit of an odd way to end the album, especially when this one trails off so elliptically. (It could be that this is meant to lead right back into "Blue Caravan", as if the album were meant to have no specific starting and ending point, but I'm just guessing.)

I might be baffled by the placement and volume level of some of the songs, but I'm still every bit as fascinated with this album as I expected I'd be after hearing most of it played live. However flawed a recording may be, Vienna's songwriting always offers so much to unravel, and the melodies and instrumental choices are almost always spot-on - it's just plain hard to go wrong with a Vienna Teng album. The same producer (Larry Klein) who decided these songs should be so sparse and intimate was also partially responsible for some of the ideas that were filled in by the other instruments (though The Section, a string quartet which played on much of the album and has accompanied Vienna live, should be recognized for their talent and innovation as well), so I can't be too hard on him for that. Dreaming Through the Noise is a fine listening experience, as long as you're willing to soak in the beauty of a song for a little while instead of expecting to have your senses fully assaulted with said beauty. Some stories have to be told in such a manner - whether to honor lost loves or to coyly lure in new ones. (Hopefully you'll become one of the latter.)

ALBUM WORTH:
Blue Caravan $1.50
Whatever You Want $1.50
Love Turns 40 $1.50
I Don't Feel So Well $2
City Hall $1.50
Nothing Without You $1.50
Transcontinental, 1:30 AM $1
1Br/1Ba $1.50
Now Three $1
Pontchartrain $2
Recessional $1
TOTAL: $15.50

Website: http://www.viennateng.com

Recommended: Yes

Great Music to Play While: Listening