ENYA – "Orinoco Flow"

The obverse of wanting to be a supreme individual, as expressed in “One Moment In Time,” is to be no one at all, or possibly everyone. Enya has routinely cautioned against labelling her music as New Age, and not unreasonably; the tissues of fluffy pabulum floating down from the George Winstons and Marden Hills of that world were the equivalent of a flotation tank or bubble bath in which yuppies could pretend to meditate for twenty minutes before striding back out onto the trading floor and shitting upon everyone else, mostly each other, a simulacrum of escape.

The case of Enya is more complicated, perhaps even more so than Kate Bush; having graduated from the junior ranks of Clannad via documentary soundtrack work, she now finds herself in the position of being the most self-enclosed artist in all of popular music; rarely venturing from her Dublin castle, she sings and plays every note on her periodic releases, all of which sell in sufficient quantities to enable her to carry on regardless. She purposely distances herself from practically everything else going on. She appears wholly (or holy?) self-contained.

Yet her career has been micromanaged by ex-Clannad manager Nicky Ryan and his wife Roma, who writes all of Enya’s lyrics; thus her voice is not, strictly speaking, her own, but her art for all desired purposes is utterly of and from her. In “Orinoco Flow” she sings of fantasies of travelling, mixing the actual (Bali, Tripoli, Tiree) with the mythical (Avalon, Babylon, the “island of the Moon”) from the perspective of someone dreaming while gazing out of her bedroom window – but she still finds space to insert in-jokes about her record company boss (“With Rob Dickins at the wheel”) and her producer (“We can sigh, say goodbye, Ross and his dependencies”).

So is the art of Enya all an elaborate conceptual prank? The music of “Orinoco Flow” is bustling, mobile, purposeful and fairly regal, like the waves on which she dreams of sailing away…but from what, or whom? The “let me sail…/let me reach, let me beach” refrains suggest frustration to the point of agony, a polite scream for liberation from a crappy non-life. But there is something about the drive (the journey?) of the multiple synthesisers and keyboards, and the piano strewn with red roses when she performed the song on TOTP – maybe even that little touch of OMD harmonies in the bridge – which arouses the siren song of 1967, a sideways return of psychedelia, a hazy, not-quite-all-there, dreamlike drift.

No doubt its success, and that of its parent album Watermark, could be superficially viewed as the parallel of Dido’s success in more recent times; a quickly soothing but non-lasting balm for thrusting Thatcherkids. But I think there is more to Enya than this; consider the fact that she has invoked the Kyrie Eleison in her songs more than once, think of the parallel developing worlds of women who were glad not to have to fit into a certain mould of 1988 – Jane Siberry’s The Walking, Mary Margaret O’Hara’s Miss America, the triumphant return of the Cocteau Twins with Blue Bell Knoll, not to mention Bilinda Butcher passim – and it is not beyond the realms of probability that this is where someone like Judee Sill might have ended up had she been stronger and lived to tell some more tales; a devotion, a vision which wasn’t that rare in the best of 1988’s music (Talk Talk’s Spirit Of Eden also comes to immediate mind) but in the context of the shameless grubbiness of the number ones which bookended “Orinoco Flow,” the record’s triumph in itself appears something of a miracle. Less a bubble bath, more a serene waterfall with the potential to transport its travellers to somewhere…better? Think, finally, of Saint Etienne’s “How We Used To Live” and its threefold explorations of what it means to “sail away,” and also the moment in Thoreau’s “Week On The Concord River” where he begins to rhapsodise to the point of abstraction when his home village vanishes from view, though always in the knowledge that he can return. Somewhere better…within ourselves? As for Enya, she is the nearest equivalent I can think of to a pop Jane Austen – she works confidently within her own two square inches of ivory, and fills them up with purpose and quiet wonder.

WOMBLES!

It’s alright but it’s not ‘Tribal Base’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGGbacPEBQ8

I like how this one builds subtly. By the end of the song, it’s muted pandemonium, like 1000 librarians going “ssshhhhh”.

I hear Enya and I think of Clannad and their very excellent “Theme From Harry’s Game”.

I always think of this as being the first number one of the 90s. Taken together with other developments at the time, the temporary success of All About Eve, Dukakis recovering some ground for the Democrats, the promotion of two young tyros on Labour’s front bench and Thatcher’s enviromental speech (no credit to her but at least her speechwriters recognised a shift in mood) it suggested that at last some softer, more human values were taking hold.

I share Punctum’s scepticism about New Age as an alternative religion for yuppies – none of that inconvenient “eye of a needle” stuff in the crystals – and its certainly arguable that Enya is an effete princess shielded from the outside world first by her extended family and then her wealth but this was undeniably refreshing.

I think “Carribbean Blue” is a better song though.

#6 There’s a remix of Yo Majesty’s ‘Club Action’ which is actually one of the best things in the world EVER.

Though a swift Google has revealed this unexpected Nicki Minaj quote:

Q: Is it true that you’re a big Enya fan?

A: Who doesn’t love Enya? Whenever I’m in a trying time, she is the calm in the middle of the storm. If I put her on, I’ll be in this crazy peaceful state. I love her style. And her harmonies are freaking genius.

#4: People hustled out of the rat race tend not to have time for culture, new age or otherwise (if you can call new age a culture rather than a marketing tool); they’re too busy worrying about how to pay the bills, feed their family etc. The ones who opt out – rather than being hustled out – tend to be those who can afford to do so.

# 15 I’m with you there Mr P, such people are more likely to be picked up by the JWs or God help them, the likes of Jim Jones and David Koresh that offer some community and/or expectation of a dramatic change than the inward-looking self-help therapies of New Age.

Unfortunate first hand experience of a near father-in-law who loved Enya and some New Age thing called Deep Breakfast in his downtime, but was more than happy to pay workers in his Chinese factories peanuts: “what would they do with the extra pay? They’d go mad!”

Well, this is better than I remembered it being. It has a sense of playfulness that’s rather appealing. Odd though, that I have no desire to investigate the rest of the Enya canon, however attractive the idea of her being a castle-dwelling recluse is. I guess that there are just some artists who just function best in popular memory as one-hit wonders – even if they technically weren’t.

Also, wasn’t this used in an advert, if not at the time then fairly soon after? Aqua Libra would be the perfect period fit of song and product…

Number 2 Watch: Three weeks of Kylie’s rather lovely ‘Je Ne Sais Pas Porquois’ – the third in a trilogy of consecutive Minogue runners-up. An endearingly gauche first attempt at grown-up sophistication.

TOTPWatch: Enya performed Orinoco Flow On the Top Of The Pops broadcast on October 20 1988. Also in the studio that week was Kylie Minogue. Steve Wright & Caron Keating were the hosts.

#26 I’m sure Willy Fogg had already got to Yokohama by then.

Of course, at this point in 1988, “Straight Outta Compton” was competing with “Introspective” for my affections. My Walkman had never been so busy.

#1: wait, did Marden Hill have a (ahem) “fluffy pabulum” phase? I recall them as El Records sophistopop (with a lean towards Bond soundtrack acid jazz a little later). I was very fond of the odd song of theirs. Was there another Marden Hill?

This song will forever be defined in my mind by that scene in the first season of “South Park” where Stan’s grampa tries to convince Stan to help him euthanize himself — he plays this song for Stan and says “this is what it’s like to be me.”

Stan (panicking): Oh god! This is horrible! This is so cheesy and lame — yet somehow strangely soothing — Grampa turn it off!

Does anyone else have much time for Clannad? Their first 2 albums aren’t – from memory – a million miles from Trees/Loudest Whisper acid folk (I’ve never explored beyond Clannad 2).

I spent hard earned cash on the theme from Harry’s Game and follow-up Newgrange, the chorus of which Radio 2’s Ray Moore ‘misheard’ as “rum te tum, pass the Erinmore”. Or maybe they really were subliminally plugging pipe tobacco?

Not much NWA on my turntable, as you can imagine.

Having grown up in a house where this kind of music – which I think of as Celtic mysticism?!? rather than new age – was being played frequently I’m probably too accustomed to listen to it anew.
If there is any romance to having Orinoco Flow at #1 maybe it’s because in a year that was generous to pops extroverts (Tiffany, Kylie, Mark Moore, Eddi Reader, Pellow, Bros, Bono)this one marked a victory for an introvert.
I’m not entirely won over though. I agree that a track like this is not a million miles from what certain indie voyagers were producing in 1988, but I would suggest the difference is that whereas listening to the Cocteaus, Mbv at their best can be as thrilling as standing in an artists studio watching them create wonderous pattens on a canvas there and then, with Enya it’s more akin to going into an art shop and seeing an attractive landscape already neatly framed and thinking “ooh thats nice”.

Enya and her sister Moya cut there chops ( if you will ) at their fathers Pub, Leo Brennan’s , in Crolly , Donegal. They both show up occasionally. If you are in Ireland – drop by. Glen Hansard was a recent guest , I think some photo’s are up at

See:http://www.leostavern.com/

One of those songs that I couldn’t stand while it was charting. As years went on, my feelings changed. Not sure why, maybe it was the New Age tag that Enya got labeled with. A #24 peak in the States.

My wife is Chinese and was exposed to very little in the way of ‘Western’ music growing up. She says this song changed her view of music – she’d never heard anything like it before. I hadn’t either, I suppose, and it sounded amazing to me too at the age of 10, but now I find it hard to take it as seriously. I suspect it’s some kind of indie snobbery towards ‘new age’ which I have to get over, as I’ll be exposed to it a lot more in the future.

I’m bothered about this “passion” meme which keeps bobbing up like Timmy Mallett’s mallet on Popular. The Top 40 isn’t La Scala and unfortunately people seem to confuse extroverted expression of emotion with genuine emotional commitment on the part of those of us who don’t feel that we need to shout or bleed what we feel.

# 48 Are you jumping the gun there WL ? Seems like a comment on the next entry !