[vienna teng]

I've just discovered Vienna Teng, a lovely and powerful singer-songwriter. Her music reminds me of Noe Venable and of Fiona Apple, though Teng is distinctly her own thing (and in fact there's a YouTube video of her covering Noe's "Midsummer Night's Dream"). Visit her site and listen to "Blue Caravan." Then check out her MySpace page and listen to "Grandmother Song." It's an Americana stomp about being an aging singer-songwriter, a common enough theme, yet it manages to tie in (allusively) the whole Taiwanese-American experience, with the weight of war and deprivation that weighs so heavily on the youngest generation.