All My CDs, pt. 111: Waking Hour

Waking Hour - Vienna Teng

Like Warm Strangers, this Vienna Teng album is full of lovely songs that each tells a story. They’re good stories, too; many of them are love songs, but with a psychological complexity that’s lacking in a lot of love songs these days. There’s also an intellectual side; this is the album that led me to conclude that Vienna Teng is a master at melding scientific fact with emotional truth, using each as a metaphor for the other. For instance, in songs like Gravity and Momentum, physical forces are used as metaphors for emotional drives. After all these years, I am convinced Momentum is about, among other things, depression: “All I’m asking is to be alive for once.”

Others have more of a narrative style, and really are stories in a more literal sense. Say Uncle tells the story of a family rallying together in the face of loss. Decade and One has its narrator reflecting on her past and life path. Enough to Go By is so compellingly evocative of both past experience and future hopes and dreams that it has become a dear favorite of mine:

I’m at your back door with the earth of a hundred nations in my skin
you won’t recognize me, for the light in my eyes is strange
it was years ago, God knows, when you strained to tell me your whole truth
that you wer enot  mine to save, that you could not change

would it be enough to go by 
if we could sail on the wind in the dark
cut those chains in the middle of the night
that had you pulled apart
would it be enough to go by
if there’s moonlight pulling the tide
would it be enough to live on
if my love could keep you alive

But my favorite song on the album is Eric’s Song, one of those complex love songs, and one that has probably influenced my own values and ideals about romantic love in general. I would select an exerpt of its lyrics to demonstrate this point, but I find that none of the verses can really stand to be taken out of context.

Next: Dreaming Through the Noise