Enya - Watermark

Did you know New Zealand owns the section of Antarctica that stretches from the south pole to 60 degrees south latitude between 160 degrees east and 150 degrees west longitude? Me neither; thanks a lot Enya. Hopefully I can rum and coke that brain cell into oblivion before that factoid accosts an unsuspecting stranger.

Stranger than that, Orinoco is both an actual river and the former name of the studio where a bunch of unsuspecting strangers had to listen to Enya perfect her hardcore rap cadence because Rob Dickens didn't sign Enya to make money, he signed her 'cause this is what he calls "now that's what I call music, mofos." I can't hate even a little, Enya's L33T and I'm not even close to joking.

We did a refresher of Irony with yesterday's album about horizontal ladies, but Cursum Perficio is probably my favorite example of true irony. That phrase was inscribed at the entrance to Marilyn Monroe's house. "Your journey ends here" ironically morphs into "this is the house you will die in" when you Dies Irae the crap out of it and I don't care who you are, that's Jim Carey the Cable Guy level dark humor right there. 

The real musicological issue here is whether or not Enya's music is New Age. She herself thinks it isn't, and I'm inclined to agree with her because it's just top-level Electronica, no matter how mystical or metaphysically Alt-Religious it might sound to your ears. She's about as convincingly New Age as Vangelis is Prog-Rock; I'll give you the vibe/aura, but not the intention. They're both just straightforward composers working with super-expensive synthesizers, same as Thomas Dolby. 

Critically speaking, Enya gets a worse rap than Tool in the pretentiousness department (even Maynard doesn't actually sing entire songs in Latin), but I don't think that's fair at all. The Irish are not a subtle or soft-spoken people, and who can blame them? It's not like she invented a nonsense language like Bon Iver (her longtime writing partner Roma Ryan totally did, but that's like 4 albums in the future). Watermark was apparently one of Princess Diana's favorite albums, but I digress.

The album as a whole turned out to be a kind of meditation on exile from the ones you love with a long sea voyage as the central metaphor. It wasn't constructed that way, Enya had complete creative control and absolutely no time restrictions, so it's technically just a bunch of random songs that happen to add up to a much larger concept. Not gonna lie, that's my favorite kind of album, and Watermark is definitely top 80, top 90 at the worst. 

I don't want you to get confused though, it's about as exciting as 900mg of melatonin (who's up for some Meshuggah tomorrow?), but that has very little bearing on whether or not the album is great. This is great, it's coherent, it's believably emotional for a waify 18th-century Irish lady on a pirate ship far from home, it basically sounds like reading a Diana Gabaldon novel. Go tell the bees Bottle's not dead, he's just taking an Enya induced lucid nap in preparation for the upcoming 3-day album bender.