{"id":701,"date":"2009-05-03T00:00:11","date_gmt":"2009-05-03T05:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/?p=701"},"modified":"2026-01-01T22:07:38","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T04:07:38","slug":"entry-163","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/?p=701","title":{"rendered":"A Butt That Won’t Sit Still"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My favorite singer-songwriter, the \u201cchick with a piano\u201d that I come back to again and again, Vienna Teng<\/a>, has a new album. It\u2019s called Inland Territory<\/i>, and I already adore it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been waiting and worrying about this one for a long time. I love her first two albums. Over a period of years, I kept finding little parallels between my life and her songs. Maybe a better way of putting it is that I kept finding ways to map her music onto my life. I think I\u2019ve heard it said before that people finding their own meaning in art is something that artists strive for. That almost never happens with me. I\u2019m much too literal. I either can\u2019t get past what I know or assume to be the artist\u2019s literal meaning, or the poetry\/imagery\/etc. is abstract enough that I can\u2019t make head or tail of it. Many of Vienna Teng\u2019s songs fall somewhere in between for me. I mentioned my found meaning behind her song \u201cHarbor\u201d in\u00a0another post here<\/a>. I actually got to speak with her very briefly at a concert in Birmingham. During the show, she had described the song very differently than my interpretation, and I ended up telling her about mine. When she autographed my copy of\u00a0Warm Strangers<\/i>, she signed it, \u201cHi Jeff – the real \u2018Harbor\u2019 :)\u201d (complete with smiley face).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Naturally I was excited about her third album, Dreaming Through the Noise<\/i>, but I just didn\u2019t feel the connection with it that I felt with the first two. It\u2019s full of music that I objectively know to be beautiful, but it just didn\u2019t grab me. I actually did map one of the songs onto some times from my past, but most of the songs just kinda went over my head (especially musically). I felt she had quite appropriately moved on, but I hadn\u2019t kept up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, I was anxious when my pre-ordered copy of Inland Territory<\/i> arrived. I needn\u2019t have been. I\u2019ll say right now that I haven\u2019t quite digested the lyrics fully enough to know whether there is any personal meaning to be extracted (that takes a while), but I at least understand where the music is coming from. Better than that, she has totally hooked me musically with several of the songs. I won\u2019t talk about them all right now, but my runaway favorite so far is named \u201cStray Italian Greyhound,\u201d and now we finally get to the reason behind this post\u2019s title.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The song has a groove. Teng always had a knack for using syncopation, and the \u201cbridge\u201d (or maybe \u201cbreak\u201d) sections in this song are full of it. The lyric she sings during that section condenses to \u201cWhat do I do with a love that won\u2019t sit still?\u201d I love that lyric anyway (especially in the context of the song\u2019s full meaning), but I almost can\u2019t help myself from grooving to the syncopation. Thus, my mind ended up morphing the line into, \u201cWhat do I do with a butt that won\u2019t sit still?\u201d \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That and many other moments in the album just put a smile on my face. Either I caught up with her on this album, or she slowed down and let<\/em> me catch up. I\u2019m not sure which, but either way I love it. I\u2019d hug her for it if I could. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My favorite singer-songwriter, the \u201cchick with a piano\u201d that I come back to again and again, Vienna Teng, has a new album. It\u2019s called Inland Territory, and I already adore it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=701"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1805,"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701\/revisions\/1805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}