Gaelic Glimmer Amid The Drone

Technology is not on the side of Enya Bhraonain, the Irish empress of Celtic atmospherics and sometime member of Irish supergroup, Clannad.

The novelty of the syntho-druid sound made famous by her family (two brothers, two uncles and a sister make up Clannad) is wearing off. Habituated to the echoic droning and multi-track choirs, we listed for that which is musically interesting.

On The Memory of Trees -- her first solo effort in four years -- we must wade through a lot of irrelevant electronic goo to find worthwhile music and to hear Enya's wonderful voice. The title track, for example, sounds like warmed-over Vangelis.

'Hope Has a Place' and 'Tea-House Moon' are two other non-starters. The best of this disc are: the intriguing (and not terribly over-produced) 'Anywhere Is'; the Gregorian-influenced chant 'Pax Deorum' (talk about your Latin beat); the Gaelic 'Athair Ar Neamh'; and the anthem, 'China Roses'. The spare piano rendering of the simple 'From Where I Am' is a pleasant surprise.

We do not expect Enya to do an MTV Unplugged session, but we think she - and her family - would do well to return, at least occasionally, to the raw acoustic sound they began with in her father's pub in rural Meenaleck.

Note: Transcribed by Samuel T Cuscovitch and posted to alt.music.enya on December 7, 1995.