A Day Without Rain

1	A Day Without Rain 2:38
2	Wild Child 3:47
3	Only Time 3:38
4	Tempus Vernum 2:24
5	Deora AR Mo Chroi 2:48
6	Flora's Secret 4:07
7	Fallen Embers 2:31
8	Silver Inches 1:37
9	Pilgrim 3:12
10	One by One 3:56
11	Lazy Days 3:42

Barnes & Noble

With the blissfully beautiful A Day Without Rain -- Enya's first album after a nearly five-year drought -- the entrancing Celtic chanteuse builds on the uniquely melodic, ethereal groove that she conceived with 1988's chartbusting Watermark. A passionate perfectionist as well as a gifted melodicist, Enya wraps her signature velvet vocals in glistening, lusher-than-life productions. In these 11 songs, her legendary voice meshes with gorgeous orchestral soundscapes, pizzicato synth strings, and carefree, springy rhythmic currents. As on previous albums, the lyrics by longtime Enya collaborator Roma Ryan dwell just on the edge of comprehension -- an affect that adds to the otherwordly mystique of the music. Delicate piano deposits a languid melody on the title track, as Enya's multilayered vocals harmonize like a choir of swooning angels. On "Wild Child" Enya builds a wall of jaunty plucked strings while singing about enjoying life with the spirit of untamed youth. In contrast, however, the ominous "Tempus Vernum" stalks purposefully with pounding timpani, coming-to-get-you gongs, and looming chanters. Like a Gaelic benediction, "Deora Ar Mo Chroi" immediately follows with airy clouds of angelic vocals and soft orchestral drones for Enya to float upon. And you'll hardly be able to resist the impulse to skip across the meadow, flower basket in hand, to the buoyant, slow-motion sway of strings and Enya's carefree vocalise on "Flora's Secret." The whole program is short but rich, and these are some of Enya's strongest melodies yet. So drink it all in, Enya fans, and rejoice at the return of one of the most alluring voices on the planet. Carol Wright

All Music Guide

Enya's first full-length album of new material in five years (and her fourth in 12 years) will have a familiar sound to the millions who have followed her career so far. As usual, the slow songs sound like "Silent Night" being performed in a cathedral, and the less slow songs are paced by rhythm patterns that would be called pizzicato passages if they were being played on real strings instead of string-like synthesizers. Over the music, Enya sings in her multi-tracked, ethereal voice, making Roma Ryan's lyrics, which are full of pastoral imagery and abstract romantic sentiments, seem even more insubstantial than they already are. In the press materials accompanying the release, Enya explains why it took her five years to come up with less than 34 and a half minutes of music that sounds like most of her earlier music by noting that she plays all the instruments and does all the singing herself without using samples. It might be more accurate to say that there is no need for her to release albums any more frequently than she does, since each one sells over a long period of time. And since her listeners are more concerned with the mood she sets than with musical content, the similarity to her other albums is a good thing. This is music that works almost entirely as a surface pleasure; strip it of its pretensions, and it's just contemporary easy listening music. William Ruhlmann