Enya - Shepherd Moons

This album takes the best parts of Watermark and refines and masters them.
From start to finish, and absolute masterpiece.
One of the most brilliant and original albums ever.
Don't skip this one. If you own only one Enya cd it should be this one.
Enya earned her place as an innovator and a force to be reckoned with on this one.
A piece of music history.
Buy this!!!

As with all of her work this one is very well done. Enya's a perfectionist and supremely good at hitting on catchy and haunting rhythms harmonys and lyrics.

SHE HAS SUCH SOFT MUSIC AND I LOVE IT IT JUST HELPS ME TO RELAXE.
I HAVE A LOT OF STRESS IN MY LIFE AND THIS HELPS TO GET AWAY FROM IT FOR A WHILE

I play this in the car all the time. It is a definite antidote to frustrating traffic jams.

The zenith of Enya's work. Ethereal and hauntingly beautiful. Marble Halls alone is worth the CD price.

Enya's cover albums are like a work of art in itself. Then once you listen, you can't imagine how beautiful and angelic of a voice. This compact disc was one of many. You feel like sailing away her to voice when you hear Caribbean Blue and other other songs on this disc. There isn't one song that I could pick but all of them. I recommend this collection as a must have for Enya fans everywhere. She will win you over with her soothing voice and spirituality. I always feel more energized listening to her music than getting a power bar.

Shepherd moons was my first introduction to Enya back in 1991. Her style and haunting voice rooted themselves in my soul ever since then and the song called Caribbean Blue still stops me in my tracks everything I have the pleasure of hearing it. It must be one of my favorite musical pieces ever for you see blue in front of your eyes as you hear it, the Atlantic waves on a beach at night or with sun light shining through like columns of light all the way down till they disappear to the abyss. Her music has the rare gift of powerful visuals they project in the listener.

New Age is so easy to like, with its non threatening characteristics it can be enjoyed at any time of day or in any mood. Shepherd Moons is one of Enya's best compilations and probably most popular among people who are loosely familiar with her. This CD is romantic in a mysteriously beautiful way, its not cloying and cheesy but both soft and powerful. The lovely thing about this album is all the different types of Enyas music you get. There are the soft ballads, the sultry pieces and deep catchy tunes, the sensual ancient Latin songs, and earthy tracks such as Book of Days That makes you feel as if on a galloping on a horse through secret passages and forests.

I absolutely love this CD, and honestly I haven't written a review of it in the past fifteen years but putting it on two days ago really enchanted me and I'm still under awe of this glorious CD to the point where I had to share some of my adoration for it.

"Shepherd Moons" is hands down one of the best albums EVER! When I decide if an album deserves this stature, not every song has to be perfect, but every song DOES have to be very good. This certainly applies here.

Go back in time--and hear that Enya was a truly talented singer/songwriter before her current (though baffling) success with "Amarantine." "Shepherd Moons" shows the magic that once was.

Highlights-
1)Shepherd Moons-This is supposed to evoke the shepherd moons that guide the meteroic ring around Saturn.This is cosmically relaxing.
2)Caribbean Blue-Very romantic,very sensual.
3)Ebudae/Angeles/Afer Ventus-These show Enya's mastery of Latin.They evoke spirituality.If you feel like you're in a sonic cathedral,you're in the right place.
4)Lothlorien-Loooong before Enya's success with "May it be",she was already making music about Tolkien.This is an enchanting instrumental;it evokes a sensual,passionate encounter between Frodo&Galadriel.One can easily imagine the both of them being amorous with each other to this music (too bad this wasn't in the soundtrack,or the movie)
5)Book of Days-This was on a soundtrack.Powerful.Inspiring.One can feel the journey.
6)No Holly for Miss Quinn-This is supposed to be based on a novel.Quite a beautiful little piece.
7)Evacuee-A song sung from the point of an English child being sent to the countryside during WWII.Too bad the recent "Lion,Witch and Wardrobe" didn't use this song but Alanis Morrissette's pseudo-Enya "Wunderkind" instead.This would've been PERFECT for the movie in its opening scenes...

Enjoy Enya!She still has the potential to be as great as she once was.This is one of her best.This is the first Enya album I had--and I was hooked.

It might be my fascination with how perfectly Enya correlates herself with the world of Tolkien and all things Middle-Earth, but if we were to skip that detail, this album in and of itself is beautiful.

This must be one of her best works, in my opinion, and I think that it is due to such interesting melodic styles on the album. I was really fond of 'A Day Without Rain' and thought that I could not find another Enya album that matched its particular essence but to my pleasant surprise, 'Shepherd Moons' is an entirely separate album on its own, and every track is worth noting. One track that differentiated itself from all others, just as an example, had to be the chanting 'Ebudae,' a song in which Enya sings in the hymns of a native tongue.

The entire album is blissful, and Enya never fails to render the soul at peace. Once you listen to the first track, you will keep your ears in tune with the rest of the album. Also, for a Tolkien fan, her versions of some of the scenes within the professor's lore are very interesting perceptions and I am happy to say that I found them strangely matched to the essence of those very scenes within the books.

Take a listen, you will be in awe. And relaxation.

this seller shipped it in a fast and orderly manner! i would buy from them again!

I ordered online via Amazon.com and used One Click for easy & fast check out. CD received within five working days. Quick and easy.

I'm sure there are some who say all Enya albums sound the same, but I believe this is truly one of her best. I hesitate to say it's better than "Watermark", but I'll call it my second favorite. This is a wonderful mix of songs. Some like "Caribbean Blue" and "Book Of Days" border on smooth pop, while others like "Lothlorien" and "Afer Ventus" are lush and hypnotic. Her arrangments of vocals and piano/synth practically lull you into a dream-state. This is obviously in every massage parlor in the country. "Angeles" is another track I love, and like the rest of the album, it really sounds angelic. However, I think the song I enjoy most, is the simple yet moving "No Holly For Miss Quinn". New fans might just want her "Best Of", but they'll indeed be missing some excellent songs from "Shepherd Moon".

If one were to tell me they were unfamiliar with Enya's work, I would tell them to buy this right away. I play this one all the time (I'm wearing it out), it's my favorite and some of her best pieces in my opinion are on here (Caribbean Blue, Ebudae, How Can I Keep From Singing? Smaointe, Afer Ventus) Highly, highly recommended.

This is a must buy CD!!!
I love Enya's music and am going to buy all of her CDs!!!

Enya and Ryan have done a fantastic job of creating soothing, yet interesting music that is well worth listening to. Enya's voice, as always, is absolutely amazing, and the lyrics have a way of making you think. The mix of Celtic and modern music adds balance to the music, while making it appealing to today's modern public.

Is it just me, or does the orginal "Book of Days" without the Far and Away lyrics in it sound so much better? Regardless it is a great album, and if you can try to find the original print that is in her celtic language and not the Far and Away mumble jumble.

With all the talk about what to call the music, the voice layering, creative genius, etheralness, Wicca, the appropriateness of a friggin' dance remix of Orinoco Flow, etc., etc., let's all remember one thing...she's a Celtic traditionalist. (And from what I heard, a devout Catholic, hence someone not really into the New Age lifestyle, but let's not go there.) Not a trendsetter or pioneer, and *absolutely* not a pop princess. Like most of us, she's at her best when she's working within her element.

That's what's so great about Sheperd Moons and makes it stand out from even the fine Watermark and The Memory of Trees (I found A Day Without Rain a big step in the wrong direction, particularly after hearing that mega-sappy Only Time played on the radio about 25 million times). She's not trying to appeal to a market or gain mainstream respectability. All she's doing is making beautiful Celtic music for its own sake, much like she's done her whole life, and adding her own personal touches to it.

Enya, more than anyone else, has the amazing ability to take any song...anything at all...and make it sound nice. But when she has an organic, unforced, straight-from-the-heart song to begin with, the result is pure beauty. It works so well, she doesn't even need to use her voice (Lothlorien and No Holly For Miss Quinn) to get an enchanting result.

The signature track is Smaointe, a six minute journey through tempo changes, Celtic chants, and a plethora of instruments (love that horn solo). For more mainstream tastes, there's Carribbean Blue and Book of Days (which is about as poppy as she should've ever gotten).

If you could buy only one Enya album...no, scratch that. Buy only one Enya album, and make it this.

People have to get over the need to categorise music as New Age, Classical etc and then get disappointed when a certain musical style doesn't seem to fit in and then worse try to compare this with the others to come up with a conclusion that therefore this falls short in some way.

People have tried to do the same with "Tubular Bells" by Mike Oldfield for example but these people fail to see the point. These genres are created for convenience by others and musicians don't go out thinking "Ah, I'm going to write music for this genre and so I'm going to restrict everything I do to these defined rules that everybody out there expects me to confine myself to...."

Such musicians compromise and aren't being true to themselves. True musicians play what they hear in their heads and if we feel we have to critique and categorise and put into containers/genres what we hear then the problem lies with us and not with the musician. That's why I refuse to call Enya's or any true musician's work "New Age", "Progressive Rock", "Alternative" etc because then you limit and belittle the work of art that it really is.

Some reviewers are saying this is not "true" New Age etc, which just seems to me to be complete and utter nonsense and totally immaterial to what is clearly a very good work of art and I think Enya's best album to date.

Music that is soothing, hauntingly beautiful in its very distinctive Celtic influence and clearly a keeper for years to come irrespective of genre. The sound quality here is quite good too but I think it's time for Reprise Records to come up with remastered versions of this and "Watermark" to bring the sound quality up to today's standards.

This is great music on its own that doesn't deserve to be crudely put into artificial 'boxes' just for convenience's sake but should be experienced in its entirety as a cohesive, flowing, great work of musical art at one sitting. Clearly one album where the whole is much, much greater than the sum of the individual tracks.

Highly recommended!