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 in any major way in the last twenty years since 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 but by and large when you buy an Enya CD you pretty much know what you are going to get. But then you buy music for a whole range of reasons, some bands you want to push the boundaries and others are all about familiarity, and here we are definitely in the second camp. 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 collection of songs was awaited with baited breath. Finally the day has come and the five years without rain has come to an end.

The title track follows and with it comes my first minor gripe. As if to go from one extreme to the other, from the new age and almost surreal territory of the opening song, lyrically speaking, here the lyrics are decidedly lack lustre and almost soppy in their sentiment. Instead of the hauntingly beautiful and obscure mesh of vocals that most of the other tracks offer up here we revert to teenage poetry and sickly sweet sentiment. Musically the music does all that is required of it but considering the high standards this and previous albums have set and considering that this is the track that titles the album then I find this a bit lacking. Maybe I need to not think too much about the words, after all my opening statements say as much, but this is a bit distracting. Much better and of a similar nature is "Its In The Rain", cellos drive the song on amid the typical swirl of keyboards and backing vocals and whilst it's typical of a lot of Enya's work has that breathy and ghostly quality that the very name promises. There is a sparseness and folk sensibility that Enya has not produced since the singers days as part of Clannad..

If "Long Long Journey" feels like a filler of a track compared to the majesty that surrounds it, it should be remembered that this is the sort of album that will be played as background music, its music to wash off the stress of a hard day as you sprawl on the sofa, glass of shiraz in hand, dreaming of distant places and unrealised ambition. Oh, that's just me then, but you know what I'm getting at. Its not music to be analysed too closely, unless of course you are writing a review of it that is. "Sumiregusa" is interesting, not least because it is based on a haiku poem by Basho and translates as Wild Violet. Again it is the minimal approach that pays dividends, the clean vocal sound contrasts with the more distant layered backing. It is a complex tapestry of sounds with a rising and falling dynamic that makes the song unpredictable. The album seems to lose its way a bit at this point falling into very standard formats. "Somebody Said Goodbye" and " Moment Lost" whilst being lovely songs make you feel as if the artists are not trying too hard and have rehashed some old sounds and reworked them, but like I said at the outset, this is not an act that charges off into unbroken territory, so maybe better that than trying something new. The instrumental song "Drifting" reminds us that the singer is not just a fantastic voice but a more than competent piano player and multi instrumentalist and the song is a haunting nocturne, Chopin for the new age. Piano also features highly on "Amid The Falling Snow" and again we are treated to the sumptuous vocals that have become the trademark of an Enya album. We end as we began with the dulcet Loxian tones of "Water Shows The Hidden Heart" and as I haven't used the word ethereal in a while, it is exactly the word you need to hear at this point.