... Amarantine, Enya's first full-length album in five years and coincidentally was released just after a similarly eagerly awaited comeback form Kate Bush, an artist held in similar regard by many. Their last release, A Day Without Rain, spent two years on the Billboard charts and as such a new ... Read review
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Amarantine
From the first blanket of choral voices awash in reverb, Amarantine is instantly
... more
recognizable as a product of Enya, the Irish chanteuse who has created a genre unto herself. Although it's been five years since her last CD, on Amarantine it's as if time...
Amarantine - Enya
From the first blanket of choral voices awash in reverb, Amarantine is instantly
... more
recognizable as a product of Enya, the Irish chanteuse who has created a genre unto herself. Although it's been five years since her last CD, on Amarantine it's as if time...
recognizable as a product of Enya, the Irish chanteuse who has created a genre unto herself. The triumvirate of Enya, lyricist Roma Ryan and producer Nicky Ryan work the f...
recognizable as a product of Enya, the Irish chanteuse who has created a genre unto herself. Although it's been five years since her last CD, on Amarantine it's as if time...
Amarantine - Enya
From the first blanket of choral voices awash in reverb, Amarantine is instantly
... more
recognizable as a product of Enya, the Irish chanteuse who has created a genre unto herself. Although it's been five years since her last CD, on Amarantine it's as if time stood still. The triumvirate of Enya, lyricist Roma Ryan, and producer Nicky Ryan work the formula they perfected on Watermark, layering her voice in lush choirs pushed along by pizzicato synth strings, swooning orchestral pads, and harpsichord arpeggios. On tracks like "Less Than a Pearl" and "Drifting," Enya flirts with a timeless sound born in gothic chants and hymns. The former is one of three songs that she sings in Roma Ryan's fictitious language of Loxian. It seems to free her, especially on "The River Sings," a veritable rave-up where she gets the tribal choir going in the style of Scottish mouth music. But to get there you have to slog through slo-mo ballads that manage to be dirge-like and singsong at the same time, like the Carpenters on Quaaludes. The relatively restrained arrangement of "It's in the Rain" almost attains a folk-like simplicity that Enya hasn't experienced since she sang with her siblings in Clannad a quarter-century ago. Amarantine sounds like it was born in cloistered solitude, self-referentially echoing Enya albums past. --John Diliberto More Enya: The Celts Watermark Shepherd Moons The Memory of Trees A Day Without Rain Paint the Sky with Stars: The Best of Enya
recognizable as a product of Enya, the Irish chanteuse who has created a genre unto herself. Although it's been five years since her last CD, on Amarantine it's as if time stood still. The triumvirate of Enya, lyricist Roma Ryan, and producer Nicky Ryan work the formula they perfected on Watermark, layering her voice in lush choirs pushed along by pizzicato synth strings, swooning orchestral pads, and harpsichord arpeggios. On tracks like "Less Than a Pearl" and "Drifting," Enya flirts with a timeless sound born in gothic chants and hymns. The former is one of three songs that she sings in Roma Ryan's fictitious language of Loxian. It seems to free her, especially on "The River Sings," a veritable rave-up where she gets the tribal choir going in the style of Scottish mouth music. But to get there you have to slog through slo-mo ballads that manage to be dirge-like and singsong at the same time, like the Carpenters on Quaaludes. The relatively restrained arrangement of "It's in the Rain" almost attains a folk-like simplicity that Enya hasn't experienced since she sang with her siblings in Clannad a quarter-century ago. Amarantine sounds like it was born in cloistered solitude, self-referentially echoing Enya albums past. --John Diliberto More Enya: The Celts Watermark Shepherd Moons The Memory of Trees A Day Without Rain Paint the Sky with Stars: The Best of Enya
recognizable as a product of Enya, the Irish chanteuse who has created a genre unto herself. The triumvirate of Enya, lyricist Roma Ryan and producer Nicky Ryan work the formula they perfected on Watermark, layering her voice in lush choirs pushed along by pizzicato synth strings, swooning orchestral pads, and harpsichord arpeggios. On tracks like "Less Than a Pearl" and "Drifting," Enya flirts with a timeless sound born in gothic chants and hymns. The former is one of three songs that she sings in Roma Ryan's fictitious language of Loxian. It seems to free her, especially on "The River Sings," a veritable rave-up where she gets the tribal choir going in the style of Scottish mouth music. But to get there you have to slog through slo-mo ballads that manage to be dirge-like and singsong at the same time, like the Carpenters on Quaaludes. The relatively restrained arrangement of "It's in the Rain" almost attains a folk-like simplicity that Enya hasn't experienced since she sang with her siblings in Clannad a quarter-century ago. Amarantine sounds like it was born in cloistered solitude, self-referentially echoing Enya albums past. --John Diliberto
Advantages: hauntingly beautiful music Disadvantages: none
Enya, which the singer herself describes as a collective, rather than the vocalist herself, is that most rare of things, a musical act that is not only immensely original but also very successful. Sitting in second place only to U2 as Ireland most successful recording artists of all time, Enya have built an empire out of combining beautiful multi-layered vocals with keyboard washes of an almost classical nature. The nature of the music has not changed ... ...the singer jumped ship from her siblings in Clannad and went solo, but its enough to realise that when you are the best in the world at a certain style, particularly as its one that you have more or less created yourself, then why deviate from your chosen path. That's not to say there isn't any variation in her work, the combinations of classical choral vocalisation, pop melody and synthesised keyboard sounds provide a wide variety possibilities ...
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Advantages: Soft, gentle ambient music, can listen to anywhere Disadvantages: Quite similar to every previous Enya album
---Introduction---
First off, I have to say that unlike most of Enya's other, previous, albums, I did not purchase this one myself and was in fact given it as a gift. After seeing it trailered extensively both in Australia and the UK, I decided not to buy it as I thought it would probably be too similar to Enya's previous work, most of which I already own. However, after I received it as a Christmas present and started listening to it I began to ... ...---Artist---
Enya is basically a combination of 3 people, Eithnne herself ("Enya" is an approximate pronounciation of this Gaelic name) and two others (Nick and Roma Ryan) who assist with vocals, writing and production. Eithnne is perhaps best known as a former member of Clannad along with her various siblings and since the 1980s has been a solo artist, making a name for herself writing and singing Celtic-influenced ambient music. Often, she sings ...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
...has improved with age and Amarantine represents something of a tour de force.
The tracks swing wildly from the soaring, majestic sound of the first song (Less than a pearl) to the more sedate, ethereal pleasantry of the eleventh (Amid the falling snow). Some of the tracks are encouraging, urging you to feel better about things and get on with life (Track 6 - Long, Long Journey) while others simply instill within you the firm belief that everything ... ...In fact, the music drags you through such a range of emotions and themes that, by the time the CD ends, you have utterly forgotten who you are, what you were doing, where you were going and why. The wonderful thing about it is, that you don't really care any more.
It is hard to say when you should listen to Enya; she lacks the upbeat tempo of 'getting ready' music, is not suicidal enough for 'just split-up' music and doesn't swear enough for 'I'm ...
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I admire Enya. She never tours, does very little Tv work etc yet she sells albums in their millions. As much as I am a fan, I was slightly disappointed with this album. Metronome seemed to be stuck at andante and lento.
Please let the next album be a bit more upbeat and let's move away from well trodden path of songs about wind, rain, the sea, the moon etc.
Sorry to all enya fans but my copy of this cd is lying gathering dust. Gone back to S/Moons.
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Album Notes: The multi-million selling queen of Celtic new age ends the five-year hiatus since 2000's 'A Day Without Rain' with this, her sixth studio album. Feverishly anticipated by her devoted fanbase, it does little to mess with her tried and tested formula of haunting, multi-overdubbed vocals and trancelike, Celtic-influenced synthesizer melodies, except that on this album she sings in more languages than before. Produced by her long-term collaborator Nicky Ryan, it includes the title-track single.
![Amarantine [CD 1] - Enya](http://picnic.ciao.com/uk/65375629.jpg)
