Enya

Enya is not just the shortened form of Eithne Patricia Ní Bhraonáin (in Gaelic, "daughter of Brennan"), the prodigy singer who grew up alongside her three siblings in a legendary "family band" called Clannad. Enya is an approach to music, to vocal technique, to recording itself. A sensory experience that is at once "abstract", seeming to spring from some unfathomable, timeless dimension where the ancestral allure of Celtic folk and the solemnity of sacred music merge with a modern electronic sound. In short, "Enya" is a genre unto itself, one of those brilliant inventions destined to remain a one-off. Not only will no one ever manage to replicate it, but she herself will refrain from offering any inevitably approximate reconstruction of it in a live setting.

Enya is thus the arcane enchantress who bewitches the very last stretch of the '80s. The decade's hedonistic, neo-romantic aesthetic, its plastic, synthetic sheen, is by now fading, on the verge of a new decade that will reject it entirely in the name of a renewed cult of authenticity, one that will find its new fetishes in grunge guitars. Enya is thus the last artificial paradise before the awakening: a dreamlike, celestial trip, yet as sensual as a primitive rite, encased in a gleaming hi-tech shell.

When "Watermark" comes out in 1988, Enya is no ingénue. She's already 27, and besides her honourable stint in Clannad, she has under her belt an important soundtrack commissioned by the BBC for a multi-part documentary on the Celts, later reworked into her debut album ("The Celts", a bestseller at home). The project has already showcased her eclectic talent as a multi-instrumentalist and the crystalline purity of her voice. But no one suspects she might become a global star. Not even Warner's Rob Dickins, who would later recall: "Sometimes the record company is there to make money, sometimes it's there to make music. With Enya it was the latter. I'd have been a genius if I'd known she would sell millions of records. I just wanted to be involved with that music." The fact remains that when the lead single, "Orinoco Flow", hits the market, the unthinkable happens. That unprecedented blend of Celtic melodies and keyboards used like African percussion, galloping along to the cry of "sail away", sends the British charts into meltdown, sitting at n.1 for three consecutive weeks. And it doesn't stop there, because "Orinoco Flow" spreads far and wide, just like the Venezuelan river it's named after, sweeping across half the world, helped along by its bucolic, pastel-toned video.

But the nursery-rhyme charm of "Orinoco Flow" is merely the commercial tip of the iceberg of a treasure chest that opens track after track, revealing its full enchantment. Starting with the incipit of the title track: a brief, classically-inflected piano instrumental of infinite tenderness that Enya will echo on the following album, "Shepherd Moons", with that other heartbreaking music-box piece called "Lothlorien". Equally precious, if less moving, are the other two instrumental interludes for piano and keyboards: the austere "Miss Clare Remembers" and the more urgent "River".

The album's spiritual breath comes through in that kind of religious psalm that is "On Your Shore", with a minimal organ accompanying the vocals, but it's also sublimated in the slow-motion chant of "Longships", where the interplay between Enya's heavenly warbling, the choirs and the instrumental pad comes close to the most exhilarating dream-states of Cocteau Twins, and in the triumphant march of "Storms in Africa", with Chris Hughes's African drums evoking Peter Gabriel-style tribalism, punctuating yet another sublime melodic progression.

An atmosphere of ecstatic calm dominates, weaving through the (magical) flute gusts of "Exile" and growing shadowier in the slow tempo of "Evening Falls", thanks to a singular blend of "ambient" synthesizers and church-organ phrases. Even darker, the gorgeous medieval litany of "Cursum Perficio" unfolds ever more feverishly in a sinister crescendo of catacomb-like choirs and majestic synths, while the closing "Na Laetha Geal M'Oige" — featuring Irish folk singer Davy Spillane on uillean pipes over a synthetic backdrop — perfectly encapsulates that union of ancient and modern that makes "Watermark" a timeless classic.

Enya's visionary talent distils centuries of Celtic folk, medieval ballads and Renaissance madrigals through a dreamy sensibility and a world music attitude. Yet the result is never pretentious — quite the opposite: the melodies are as magical as they are humble and simple, as befits the best tradition of pop music.

But what breathes soul into these abstract sketches is above all the angelic contralto of the Irish fairy, brilliantly bolstered in the studio by producer Nick Ryan through extensive use of the "multivocals" technique: for a single track, Enya records and layers up to a hundred voices, and the result is a polyphonic choir worthy of the most imposing Gregorian chants, alternately serving as a soft background or as the central harmonic bed of the songs.

Enya herself also handles all the instruments, particularly piano, keyboards and synthesizers. The lyrics, meanwhile — in Gaelic, Latin or English — are penned by Nick's wife, poet Roma Ryan: an evocative collection of enchanted fairy tales, but also sentimental odes and visions of legendary, at times frightening, worlds.

"Watermark" will go on to sell more than 11 million copies worldwide, granting Enya the most unexpected stardom of the decade. After the magnificent follow-up "Shepherd Moons" in 1991, however, her sound will remain as if trapped inside a crystal sphere, growing ever more repetitive and mannered and losing much of its charm. Still, the credit remains hers for having coined an inimitable genre, revitalising sounds lost in the mists of time and sealing one of the most enchanting achievements in popular music.

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04/08/2013