Enya - A Day Without Rain

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• The Journey to Wild Divine Biofeedback Software & Hardware for PC & Mac: The Passage

Music reviews of A Day Without Rain

Music Review: Old Friends in Silly Clothes (No Less Welcome For a' That)
Rating: 3 Stars

The major departure here (and the reason for my initial reluctance to get past the learning curve) is the inclusion of a string section, played pizzicato and used in a very singsong, childlike (almost childISH) manner, giving many of the songs a "dee-da, dee-da" quality. In fact, Enya actually SINGS words like "da-di-da-di-da" and "dee, da, day" on some of the tracks! However, with enough listenings, that majestic, ethereal, other-worldly Enya overdub mystique eventually wins out and pulls you through to the very likeable heart of the songs.

The tracks on "Day" sound more like each other than do the tracks on any previous release, although less derivative of her previous work than other albums, but there are conceptual repeats: the minor-key song that starts out in Latin with a driving cadence and resolves into the tonic major, sometimes in Gaelic, with a weightless, floating quality ("Tempus Vernum/Deora Ar Mo Chroi" = "Cursum Parficio" = "Pax Deorum," and - to a lesser extent - "I Want Tomorrow"); the rather stilted, recursive, heavily rubatoed piano solos, usually built around quadruplets ("Silver Inches" = "No Holly for Miss Quinn" = "From Where I Am" = "River" = "Miss Claire Remembers" = "Portrait"); the didactic, half forewarning, half admonition song which walks a fine line between lament and hope ("Pilgrim" = "Once You Had Gold" - this is a relatively new genre which has crept into Enya's oeuvre, so there aren't many examples of it...yet); and finally, the self-pitying, lachrimose-bordering-on-schmaltzy paeans lamenting lost loves or lost lives ("Fallen Embers" = "Evacuee" = "From Where I Am" = "On Your Shore"). This last song type I usually find myself skipping over with the remote, and "Fallen Embers" is no exception. In fact, the song is so overblown with melodrama that Enya actually allows the emotion to overwhelm her singing, resulting in an incredibly uneven delivery.

Despite all these familiar "faces," however, the album's shortness precludes the inclusion of (or Enya simply got tired of cannibalizing) a number of other recurring themes. Gone, for example, are the mythic, druidic, mind-bending chants that put Enya on the (pre-"Orinoco Flow") map in the first place, the mystical, musical prayers to nature that seem to go beyond pop music's bonds and lift the listener into an out-of-body experience. No "Aldebarans" here, no "Lothloriens," "La Sonadoras," or "Dan Y Dwrs." In fact, there is only one Gaelic language song on the entire album - one wonders if Miss Enya is bending to the pressure of hopelessly vanilla record executives who fear alienating potential new listeners (read "consumers") with material that is too "ethnic." (Note to vanilla record exec types: if you REALLY want to alienate us consumers, make us wait TEN years for the next Enya album, and make sure it's barely 15 minutes long instead of a whole half hour!)

Also missing are the fun, bardic, medieval-sounding "dance" tracks, New Age branles that gave the early albums their Celtic feel, like "Bard Dance," "Epona," and "Ebudae." Nor has Enya included any of the ingenuous, nursery rhyme-style, fable-like songs which make her seem so naïf-like, untouched and untouchable by the modern world; songs like "Marble Halls," "Fairytale," "Shepherd Moons," or "To Go Beyond" find no place on this album. Instead, Enya has replaced songs of youth with songs of absurdity, letting a baby-talk voice, occasionally childish lyrics, and singsong phrasing do the work of telling us about innocence instead of digging down deep and creating her own musical forms to actually show us that innocence.

Still, a day without "A Day Without Rain" is...well, like a day without Enya. Even though it's not up to the same standards of excellence, innovation, and exploration as some of her earlier work (I sadly resign myself to never re-experiencing the thrill of getting to know a "Watermark," "The Celts," or "Shepherd Moons" for the first time), it's worth having, and you will invariably find yourself humming snatches of these songs as they make themselves at home in your mind and heart. If you want originality and novelty, there are plenty of other artists out there. "A Day Without Rain" is a family reunion of old friends in new clothes come to call once more. Sure, they may be a little tired, lapsing into the second childhood of old age and looking a bit homogenized from all the inbreeding. But once you get reacquainted, you'll realise how much you missed them. And really, who wants old friends to change all that much anyway?

Description of A Day Without Rain

International CDs

• Music > Styles
• New Age
• Pop
• Rock