Product Description

An album by Enya has always been an event, rather than just another record release. Yet seldom has any new album been as keenly anticipated as Amarantine.

In the five years since Enya’s last album, A Day Without Rain, which also spent a phenomenal two years on the billboard chart, Enya has been recording the brand new album in Ireland with her longstanding partnership of producer/arranger Nicky Ryan and lyricist Roma Ryan. The result is Enya’s most rounded and fully realised work to date.

Track Listing

1. Less Than A Pearl
2. Amarantine
3. It's In The Rain
4. If I Could Be Where You Are
5. The River Sings
6. Long Long Journey
7. Sumiregusa
8. Somebody Said Goodbye
9. A Moment Lost
10. Drifting
11. Amid The Falling Snow
12. Water Shows The Hidden Heart

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22168 in Music
• Released on: 2005-11-21
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
From the first blanket of choral voices awash in reverb, Amarantine is instantly recognizable as a product of Enya, the Irish chanteuse who has created a genre unto herself. Although it's been five years since her last CD, on Amarantine it's as if time stood still. The triumvirate of Enya, lyricist Roma Ryan, and producer Nicky Ryan work the formula they perfected on Watermark, layering her voice in lush choirs pushed along by pizzicato synth strings, swooning orchestral pads, and harpsichord arpeggios. On tracks like "Less Than a Pearl" and "Drifting," Enya flirts with a timeless sound born in gothic chants and hymns. The former is one of three songs that she sings in Roma Ryan's fictitious language of Loxian. It seems to free her, especially on "The River Sings," a veritable rave-up where she gets the tribal choir going in the style of Scottish mouth music. But to get there you have to slog through slo-mo ballads that manage to be dirge-like and singsong at the same time, like the Carpenters on Quaaludes. The relatively restrained arrangement of "It's in the Rain" almost attains a folk-like simplicity that Enya hasn't experienced since she sang with her siblings in Clannad a quarter-century ago. Amarantine sounds like it was born in cloistered solitude, self-referentially echoing Enya albums past. --John Diliberto

More Enya:

The Celts	Watermark	Shepherd Moons
The Memory of Trees	A Day Without Rain	Paint the Sky with Stars: The Best of Enya

CD Description
The multi-million selling queen of Celtic new age ends the five-year hiatus since 2000's 'A Day Without Rain' with this, her sixth studio album. Feverishly anticipated by her devoted fanbase, it does little to mess with her tried and tested formula of haunting, multi-overdubbed vocals and trancelike, Celtic-influenced synthesizer melodies, except that on this album she sings in more languages than before. Produced by her long-term collaborator Nicky Ryan, it includes the title-track single.

Customer Reviews

A truly gorgeous album!
I've been a huge fan of Enya's since Watermark. Her music has got me through some pretty horrible times over the years. I eagerly awaited the arrival of this CD through the letterbox, I was not disappointed. "WOO-HOO!" and "WOW" sum up my thoughts after one listen.

The "Enya sound" is there, but this album provides some different ideas and compositions. It's a very strong album with no weak tracks at all. Stunning!

Personal favourites songs are "Amarantine", "If I Could Be Where You Are", "Long Long Journey", "Amid The Falling Snow" and "Water Shows The Hidden Heart". Those tracks are just beautiful and take the listener away from every day life.

The song you'll find the hardest to stop your feet from tapping to has to be "The River Sings", just a superb punchy track! And I adore the haunting "Sumiregusa".

It's hard to favour an Enya album over another, but I've been blown away by this one. Arguably some of her best work so far.

Greater tracks are... in Loxian language...,
I love Enya and love her beautiful music - no one does music like her. I have to admit that I was too anxious for a new Enya cd.

When I listen to 'Sumiregusa' (for a japanese commercial) - last Spring I was too excited.
And when I was listenning to this new Amarantine I get a little disappointed.

There ARE very beautiful songs - in fact all of them, but the ones that impressed me the most are: 'Less Than A Pearl', 'Amarantine', 'The River Sings', 'Sumiregusa(Wild Violet)' and 'Drifting'.

Some of the best tracks - especially tracks 1 and 5 - are sung, not in english, nor gaelic, nor quenya or anykind of elvish (The Lord Of The Rings), nor any language we know... but Loxian Language - created by lyricist Roma Ryan(!) These are the most sublime tracks on the entire cd and the most satisfying ones too.
This new language - Loxian - you can find more details on the book by Roma Ryan - 'Water Shows The Hidden Heart' - wich is also the name of the last track in 'Amarantine'.

And the great of all 'Sumiregusa' is sung in japanese! This time Enya didn't sung in gaelic! And I love her singing in gaelic!

And the other fabulous track, 'Drifting', only instrumental and it's not - this time - the first of the album. This one sounds like a good classic composition! Yes! Believe me!

The other tracks are good but not so good as the ones found in the other previous Enya cds! But enjoy! If you like Enya, please buy it! Anyway, it IS so hard for us to get a new cd by Enya so we just have to crab it when the chances came.

Amarantine- destined to be a timeless classic...
Like the great Kate Bush, who has re-emerged triumphantly after years out of the spotlight, so another great female musician makes a very welcome return, again offering hope for all those who detest the sterility of modern pop music.

By that, I of course mean Enya. Her music may not be as eccentric and eclectic as Kate’s, but her folky melodies, her beautifully lush landscapes and her gentle vocals have always given her music a unique, almost other-worldly quality. Certainly, it is the formula that made albums such as A Day Without Rain classics, and what made her work for the Lord of the Rings soundtracks so appropriate.

Amarantine very much sticks to her trademark; yet again she has produced a work of such beauty and purity that it has to be heard to be believed. With the title track and “Long Long Journey”, it really does feel like you are transported to Middle Earth and the world of Tolkien. The fact that “Sumiregusa” is sung in Japanese and that three songs are sung in an invented language called Loxian only adds to the sheer mystical appeal of the record.

The amarantine is, apparently, a timeless flower. Certainly, this is an absolutely timeless flower of a record. By far, her strongest album to date. And that is not to be sniffed at.