A night without dreams. (A Day Without Rain - Enya)

Name: spiffo

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Product:	A Day Without Rain - Enya
Date:	09/05/01 (145 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Soothing and relaxing, Inspiring, Good background music.

Disadvantages: A bit bland, A lot of the tracks sound similar.

I have to admit that this really isn't my usual type of music. Looking through the playlist on my computer's MP3 player, less than as quarter of the songs you see feature both recognisable lyrics and a lack of any guitars.

I've heard stuff by Enya for years, of course, but it was only "Wild Child", which seems to have been playlisted on Magic FM (which, uh... I keep hearing because my Dad listens to it. Honest...) that really caught my attention. It sounded good, it was captivating and, most importantly, I was actually annoyed each time it ended and another song came on.

The album itself is very short (just over half an hour), but also very listenable. Unlike most of the music I listen to, and even most music in its own genre, it blends very much into the background, making it perfect for those times when you need to concentrate, but when you don't want silence. The CD can loop a couple of times before you realise it's finished.

Of course, the downside to this is that much of the album is bland and samey. Even after you've heard the album 10 or so times you can still find it hard to identify some of the tracks.

Track listing and comments:

1. A Day Without Rain (2:38): A good solid opening track. Nice introduction, but I don't think it was ever meant to be anything special.
2. Wild Child (3:47): The most widely publicly played track from the album. Much more lively than most of the stuff on the CD. The track is very repetitive, but somehow this doesn't irritate. In fact, I think that the track could have done with being 30 seconds or a minute longer.
3. Only time (3:40): Calmer than Wild Child, but otherwise reasonably similar. Enya's shows off how good her voice can sound well.
4. Tempus Vernum (2:24): An attempt to sound slightly darker and more serious than the rest of the album. The music grave, and always reminds me of a ship riding through a storm, and the Lat
in lyrics add to the solemn feeling.
5. Deora Ar Mo Chroi (2:49): Probably the quietest and slowest album on the track. While this is playing, it barely seems as if there's a CD playing at all. A bit *TOO* quiet and slow if you ask me...
6. Flora's Secret (4:07): A return to the faster, bouncier feel of before. Again, Enya's voice sounds very good.
7. Fallen Embers (2:31): A far more classical sounding piece. It sounds like the sort of song that music students would have to sing to practice their voices. I found it quite boring, to be honest.
8. Silver Inches (1:37): No lyrics, but a chance to hear how good the instrumentals can be. It's a very short track, so it doesn't have time to get dull.
9. Pilgrim (3:12): Lively, but not at all bouncy. Again, Enya's voice sounds very good, and the lyrics are well written.
10. One By One (3:54): My favourite track on the album. Very good backing music, and a fantastic overall feel.
11. Lazy Days (3:41): A slightly disappointing end to the album, it sounds quite nice, but is reasonably bland.

I've found that putting this album on while I'm working is very good for inspiration and the imagination, and (bizarrely) that leaving it on when I fall asleep usually gives me far more interesting dreams that I would otherwise have.

The album is certainly worth buying if you need something that will blend into the background, but I think it would be difficult to justify paying the full price for this CD if you already have a few similar sounding albums in your collection.

Summary: