VIENNA TENG, BEN SOLLEE
CLUB CONGRESS
Saturday, May 2
Sitting at the keyboard in her cowboy boots and with a flower in her
hair, Vienna Teng looked like her music sounds—lithe, lilting,
smart and soulful. Between songs, she chatted about her travels and the
stories behind her songs, as if we were all sitting around a little
table on Maynards’ back patio, drinking spring brews and watching the
train go by.
Teng’s career to date is both a tribute to unquenchable talent and
an object lesson in the perils of intellect and music-theory mastery,
all attached to a pop sensibility. She does not rock. Her music will
forever be simply, breathtakingly beautiful. Fortunately, voice lessons
didn’t take; she says they kept telling her she was doing it all wrong.
One suspects “they” didn’t appreciate the charm of her vocals’
occasionally conversational intimacy.
Had she been a good voice student, her natural range and control
likely would’ve landed her in opera or on Broadway, neither of which
would suit her spirit. Somewhere in there is a punk wannabe. You can
glimpse a bit of its fizz in Teng’s attitude, and it all hangs out in
the intergenerational crossfire of “Grandmother Song,” a semi-gospel
blues rave-up that she says was recorded under the influence of
free-flowing sangria in the studio.
In the beauty contest, she clearly has too much personal integrity
to be Celine Dion (her poetry has nary a whiff of sap, anyway) and too
much class to be Mariah Carey. Tori Amos, maybe? She is none of those,
so we were privileged to sit, maybe 100 strong, in Club Congress, seven
years after her first appearance on David Letterman, awestruck and
helplessly tapped in to some romantic streak in our rock-hardened
souls.
Opener Ben Sollee is the Andrew Bird of the cello. Who knew a cello
could sound like an electric guitar and a bass playing at the same
time? Or horns and percussion? Unlike Bird, Sollee plays it straight
and, at least on Saturday night, solo. His music ranges from
singer-songwriter poignancy to show-tune catchiness with rich streaks
of indie pop. He has a sense of fun, albeit with an edge. A part-time
environmental advocate, he brought knowing chuckles from the crowd with
“Bury Me With My Car,” a mock paean to America’s fossil-fuel
fixation.
This article appears in May 7-13, 2009.