Like so much inspirational endeavour, it began in a garden shed. Enya (Eithne Ní Bhraonáin in her native Irish), dissatisfied with her role in Clannad, was experimenting with Nicky Ryan, the band’s manager, and Ryan’s wife Roma, a poet. Using multi-tracking, a shimmering electronic sound, and melodies that had a similar relationship with Irish folklore as an O’Neill’s pub, they created in the 1980s a style of soft-focus electro-folk so earwormingly catchy that “Orinoco Flow”, on her second, 1988 album Watermark, parked itself at number one for three weeks, and became the song Alan Partridge sings to himself.
The sheen of Enya’s electronic sound is now not so much evocative of new age, as old age
The composing now happens in a castle, but otherwise artistic vision and personnel remain unchanged. Nearly 30 years after her solo debut, Dark Sky Island is apparently inspired by Roma Ryan’s poetry about the Channel Island Sark, a so-called “dark sky island” – one good for viewing the stars, that is. Unfortunately, with this, Enya’s eighth solo album, she is not so much looking at a new, far-off galaxy, as she is in the mirror, at her last seven albums. Only the title track and “Echoes In Rain”, the first single, have any narrative, and that’s a bit fortune cookie-ish. The rest rely on repetition – one person’s mesmeric is another person’s stultifying – and sound-painting. The sheen of Enya’s electronic sound hasn’t changed at all over the years, and is now not so much evocative of new age, as old age.
Which brings with it, for much of the album, an inescapable sense of fatigue. “Sancta Maria” is just those two words repeated over a bland waft of a tune and some opportunistic key-changes. And what, please, is a “Forge of the Angels”? The airiness of angels and the clanking metalwork of a forge seem mutually exclusive, however you look at it, and the chanting soundtrack (admittedly in Loxian, Roma Ryan's made-up language) casts no light on the matter. Attempts are sometimes made to elevate some of Enya’s earlier albums as innovative, even forward-looking in their generic cross-fertilisation. There’s a case to be made with Watermark, but now, 25 years on, her approach is the same, just less energetic. It’s not that it sets out to be exciting and passionate – like Cheryl or Justin Bieber – and fails annoyingly. The trouble with Dark Sky Island is that it sets out to be a faded copy of earlier work, and succeeds.