The music of Enya reaches for the earthly divine. Her vocal harmonies and soundscapes conjure natural paysages their intensity and ephemerality. Hailing from a hamlet in quaint rural north-western Ireland, she honed an atmospheric sound informed by her natural surroundings and Gaelic heritage that would be known globally. While her music is best known as a unifier of late 20th-century New Age and Pop music, she combined elements of Celtic, Christian, classical, and electronic music throughout her career.
While an emphasis on Celtic folk music was shown, in her brief membership of her siblings' band Clannad, the elements of electronic and New-age music would become more apparent once she released her first solo album, The Celts, a soundtrack album to a documentary by the same name. The album emphasizes the atmospheric, misty, and nondescript. But many of the pieces had a regality to them (The Celts, March of the Celts), like the listener was witnessing the procession of ancient Celtic royalty. Singing in Gaelic and English, Enya's vocals became essential in transferring a memory of a lost world.
It is her second album Watermark, that best exemplifies the ephemeral and meditative sound that Enya would be known for. In this album 2 of Enya’s most important themes become truly apparent: the progression of time and the voyage. These themes further coalesce to demonstrate the principal theme found in her work: lost worlds.
The album begins with Watermark, a damp piano instrumental that ambles between ascending and descending progressions circularly, transporting listeners to a state of chronic meditation as drops of rain descend down window panes. The instrumental songs, similarly feel like subtle interludes that induce a feeling of the passing of time. Miss Clare Remembers employs a similar piano melody with a modulation of tempo, while the jittery but compressed River bounces and shimmers repetitively to filtered piano tunes and synths that attempt to sparkle as if music is being played underneath a magical stream.
While Enya's songs consistently demonstrate an ethereality, they still have antecedents in the natural world, most notably through their imagery of oceans and shores.
On Your Shore maintains the contemplative distance that would be present in many of her songs. The shore on which she finds herself is a mixture of solace, anxiety, and celestial comfort as she invites the listener to reconnect with a dream of childhood wonder. These distant shores that Enya contemplates become other oceans of consciousness, a new world, the world of lovers, unknown worlds, and lost worlds. In Exile, a mixture of melancholy, solace, and contemplation is similarly captured. This sadness is not soul-crushing, it is both a dream-like contemplation of love while remaining a grounded song. Evening Falls... conjures the requiem of a wandering spirit through ghostly ambient pads, vocal layers, and the subtle inclusion of an organ. A similarly haunting song Na Laetha Geal M'oige has Enya singing in Gaelic with the composure and breath of a still ocean.
However, this contemplative distance is not the principal mood of Watermark. Cursum Perficio employs a more immediate tone and soon progresses to an almost tribalistic fervor. In Latin, Enya repeats the mantra "Curusum Perficio" which translates into "my journey ends here" a reference to the tile on Marlyin Monroe's home in which she was found dead. While the mantra is repeated, it sounds far from neurotic or insane, it sounds assured, like an astute sorcerous casting a spell aware of its irreversibility. A ritualistic rebirth is enacted.
Songs such as Longships conjure images of nature in their breadth and vigor. The strength and consistency of the waves that crash upon the Irish cliffs and exemplified by the the rhythmic drums and the looping piano. Meanwhile, Enya's voice rises from below like a priestess summoning the strength of the wind and tides to bid sail to massive Viking ships. This commanding spirit of nature would remain in later songs.
Orinoco Flow, the best-known song and the closest to be classified as pop employs a jittering procession of string chords as well as a bouncing piano melody. The listener is transported to foreign lands. She sings"From Bissau to Palau, in the shade of Avalon/From Fiji to Tyree and the Isles of Ebony/From Peru to Cebu, hear the power of Babylon/From Bali to Cali, far beneath the Coral Sea"
The exotic and venerable lands which she recalls evoke an ancient and untouched power in nature. The bright Caribbean, the mythical Avalon, and the oases of the Sahara all merge into an emotion of reverence before nature.
Her 3rd album Shepherd Moons forgoes much of the earthliness of her previous albums in favor of a celestial odyssy. It is only the stars and water that are recruited as nature's messengers. Aquatic and translucent synths and pads layer the background, approaching haunting but ultimately consoling.
The focus is more deliberately on her contemplative and ethereal compositions. The more apparent influence of Christian hymns lends well to this choice. How Can I Keep From Singing (originally a 19th-century Christian hymn of uncertain origin) is both moving and consoling. The more refined post-production on Enya's vocals allows vocal harmonies to stretch and jump. The vocals on Book of Days cycle between steadfast and pirouetting capturing the euphoric feeling of unfettered flight. For better or worse the album is more cohesive and focused than Watermark.
As with many artists language within Enya's songs is not solely for lyrics. The voice is used as an instrument of thought, but in few is it as apparent as Enya. It is for this reason that the many languages that Enya employs do not deter from her music. However language is not used facetiously, the Gaelic and Elvish which Enya employs add yet another layer to vocals; that of a lost world captured in language.
No comments:
Post a Comment