Enya: A Day Without Rain

It takes a while for Irish composer and singer Enya to craft her lush, layered New Age soundscapes: A Day Without Rain's 34 minutes were five years in the making. Chalk it up to the painstaking precision of the album's dense orchestral sweep, but she's wise to take her time given each recording's familiar ingredients. Really, would her records each sell millions if they came out every year or two A Day Without Rain does little to deviate from the formulas of the five-year-old The Memory Of Trees, the nine-year-old Shepherd Moons, the twelve-year-old Watermark, and so on. That familiarity isn't always a detriment, with the Badalamenti-worthy title track and poppy "Wild Child" opening the album on a note worthy of Enya's best-loved material. But A Day Without Rain recycles ideas so relentlessly that tracks like "Only Time" could just as easily have been duped from an earlier album and retitled, while "Tempus Vernum" plods along with the rigid portent of a Rammstein single, but without the irony. 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.