I don’t know who you are, reading this little blog of mine (thanks!), but I’m going to make the big assumption you don’t like Enya. Unless you are, like, one of my friend’s moms who rely on “Caribbean Blue” to get you through the daily household chores. Or a Grammy voter. Again, thanks for the page view. But it that isn’t you…you probably don’t like Enya, or you enjoy her in a hyper-limited space i.e. The Lord Of The Rings soundtrack. “New Age” is just one of those genres that rarely get embraced critically, evidenced by everyone backing away from Swedish duo jj after they made an album sounding a bit too much like Enya.
Tokyo’s Ferri walks the thinnest of lines between falling into “Only Time” on “Tomorrow Comes After Today.” Sampling waves coming into shore, for example, gets it teetering. Yet she doesn’t tumble, and instead delivers a deeply interesting track with more indebted to artists like Lau Nau or even Sigur Ros, atmospheric-emphasis but always moving or building. Ferri’s vocals here never turn into cult mantras like Enya’s stuff does, and the actual music never gets caught in a loop bound to become a sonic screensaver. She nudges this along, small discoveries here and there, before it hits the climax and blooms open. “Tomorrow” doesn’t want to be behind you…it wants to pull you inside, envelop the listener and show them all the things it sees and feels. Last major difference between this and Enya – this is just gorgeous. Listen below.
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaBcEsYImu8″]
Thanks to Neaux for posting this first, and also invoking the name Enya.