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Enya keeps the comfort factor high with several compositions that are arguably descendants of her 1989 pop hit, "Orinoco Flow." She steps outside of that zone on the first single, "Only Time," an elegant effort that is wrapped in soothing harmonics fondly reminiscent of vintage Beach Boys tunes...
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This is music that works almost entirely as a surface pleasure; strip it of its pretensions, and it's just contemporary easy listening music.
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Unfortunately, A Day Without Rain, Enya's first new studio album in five years, lacks the edge that could pry it loose from the New Age niche. The Irish traditional music Enya performed so skillfully in the early 1980s with Clannad has by now largely disappeared in a mélange of sly, Celtic-flavored pop hooks and muddled mysticism. The only mystery is why it took her so long to come up with something so short (under 35 minutes) -- and, in many spots, so uninspired.
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Self-seriousness and artistic water-treading aside, there's nothing wrong with A Day Without Rain. It's just that few households need more than an hour or so of Enya music, and Shepherd Moons and Watermark serve that purpose far more effectively.
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Essentially, it sounds exactly like each of her four previous albums. Sure, she's consistent, but does she never tire of forever sounding the same...?
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If Enya were a Pokemon, she'd be Jigglypuff, the little pink monster who renders her opponents powerless by singing them to sleep.... The Irish multi-instrumentalist-singer-composer's skill at ephemeral sonic watercolors has grown wearisome, like a relative who tells the same stories every holiday.
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Entertainment WeeklyUnless you're bound in an herbal body wrap, there's simply no acceptable reason to listen to this New Age nonsense. [11/24/2000, p.82]
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Yanni is Tchaikovsky by comparison, Sarah McLachlan Ella Fitzgerald, treacle Smithfield ham.... Like Master P or Michael Bolton only worse, she tests one's faith in democracy itself.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 92 out of 111
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Mixed: 3 out of 111
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Negative: 16 out of 111
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Aug 16, 2013
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Jul 1, 2013
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Feb 13, 2021