- Audio CD (20 Nov 2006)
- Number of Discs: 1
- Format: Original recording remastered, Import
- Label: Verve
- ASIN: B000J233SU
- Other Editions: Audio CD | Audio Cassette
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 715,448 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
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Product details |
Track Listings
| 1. Blacksmith |
| 2. She Moved Through The Fair |
| 3. Stolen Child |
| 4. The Lark In The Clear Air |
| 5. Carrighfergus |
| 6. Kellswater |
| 7. Banks Of Claudy |
| 8. Come By The Hills |
| 9. Lullaby |
Product Description
Album Description
Loreena McKennitt's debut album and Quinlan Road's inaugural release. Like all her subsequent recordings, this album was self-produced. Its nine tracks showcase McKennitt's talents as a singer and harpist with fresh and memorable arrangements of traditional Celtic favourites, and musical settings of much-loved poems by Yeats and Blake. Featured guests include Cedric Smith and Douglas Campbell. The album has been completely remastered and includes a multilingual weblink. Also included is an additional DVD featuring the Loreena McKennitt documentary No Journeys End and the videos "The Bonny Swans" and "The Mummers' Dance" mixed in 5.1 sound.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
28 of 28 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
This is Loreena Mckennitt's first album and it is one of my favourites. It has a more traditional celtic sound than later albums, and it is absolutely gorgeous. Her voice is truly beautiful to listen to. My personal favourite on this CD is Blacksmith. I am only a recent discoverer of the work of Loreena Mckennit and it's a shame her music is still relatively unknown. I fervently recommend this to anyone who likes Celtic style music, or even anyone wishing to try something away from the mainstream pop market.
9 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
In the 90s the name Loreena McKennit was synonymous with the new folk music which had gone back to the roots-music which can be compared with Clannad,Caroline Lavelle (who has input on some of the songs),Claire Hamill and Enya.
Like Judy Collins before her she uses folk songs and is also a writer who had travelled the World.
As the only artist on the Quinlan Road label Loreena McKennit has become something of an industry where everything is always available and now takes in DVDs and a huge website.
Though she's selling to her own fanbase rather than the pop charts her music is no doubt collected by those who buy Wyndham Hill product and it stays in its own turf.
In the World of Loreena McKennit there's no excess and no attempts to change what for her is a winning formula so it means the pop charts are far distant lands.It becomes a case where there's always better stuff than what they tell you you should like so Loreena McKennit is not about to be plastered all over the windows of HMV who sell the CDs in the Folk section
But there are other charts she has appeared in such as the specialist ones for her kind of music.With The Mummers Dance-which in another time would have topped the charts=a remix of it actually made the Dance Chart!
The danger though in collecting McKennit music is that you can become addicted.The lady simply has a stunning name and looks good
Like Judy Collins before her she uses folk songs and is also a writer who had travelled the World.
As the only artist on the Quinlan Road label Loreena McKennit has become something of an industry where everything is always available and now takes in DVDs and a huge website.
Though she's selling to her own fanbase rather than the pop charts her music is no doubt collected by those who buy Wyndham Hill product and it stays in its own turf.
In the World of Loreena McKennit there's no excess and no attempts to change what for her is a winning formula so it means the pop charts are far distant lands.It becomes a case where there's always better stuff than what they tell you you should like so Loreena McKennit is not about to be plastered all over the windows of HMV who sell the CDs in the Folk section
But there are other charts she has appeared in such as the specialist ones for her kind of music.With The Mummers Dance-which in another time would have topped the charts=a remix of it actually made the Dance Chart!
The danger though in collecting McKennit music is that you can become addicted.The lady simply has a stunning name and looks good
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
66 reviews
22 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Always good
9 July 2005
Format:Audio CD
Loreena McKennitt is always good, her music never disappoints. There are three highlights to this CD, the first three songs.
She starts with her interpretation of the traditional "Blacksmith" followed by a haunting version of "She Moved Through the Fair".
However it is the third song that soars. Loreena has put William Butler Yeat's classic poem "Stolen Child" to music and the poem takes flight with her orchestration and vocals.
The lyrics remain crisp and emotive with such lines as:
Where dips the rocky highland
Of sleuth wood in the lake
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats
There we've hid our fairy vats
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away oh human child
To the waters and the wild
With a faery hand in hand
For the world's more full of weeping
Than you can understand.
Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light
By far off furhter rosses
We foot it all the night
Weaving olden dances
Mingling bands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles
whilst the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.
Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above glen car
in pools among the rushes
that scarce could bathe a star
we seek for slumbering trout
and whispering in their ears
give them unquiet dreams
leaning softly out
from ferns that drop their tears
over the young streams.
Away with us he's going
the solemned eyed
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
or the kellte on the hob
Sing peace into his breast
or see the brown mice bob
round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child
to the waters and the wild
with a faery hand in hand
for the world's more full of weeping
than you can understand.
McKennitt makes this wonderful poem come alive for a new generation. That alone is worth the price of the CD.
She starts with her interpretation of the traditional "Blacksmith" followed by a haunting version of "She Moved Through the Fair".
However it is the third song that soars. Loreena has put William Butler Yeat's classic poem "Stolen Child" to music and the poem takes flight with her orchestration and vocals.
The lyrics remain crisp and emotive with such lines as:
Where dips the rocky highland
Of sleuth wood in the lake
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats
There we've hid our fairy vats
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away oh human child
To the waters and the wild
With a faery hand in hand
For the world's more full of weeping
Than you can understand.
Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light
By far off furhter rosses
We foot it all the night
Weaving olden dances
Mingling bands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles
whilst the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.
Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above glen car
in pools among the rushes
that scarce could bathe a star
we seek for slumbering trout
and whispering in their ears
give them unquiet dreams
leaning softly out
from ferns that drop their tears
over the young streams.
Away with us he's going
the solemned eyed
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
or the kellte on the hob
Sing peace into his breast
or see the brown mice bob
round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child
to the waters and the wild
with a faery hand in hand
for the world's more full of weeping
than you can understand.
McKennitt makes this wonderful poem come alive for a new generation. That alone is worth the price of the CD.
23 of 24 people found the following review helpful
A voice as clear and sharp as cold crystal.
12 May 2000
Format:Audio CD
Loreena McKennitt is not one of those vocal artists whose voice is lost amidst background music that is either too loud or too overwrought. Her voice is as crystal clear as stars seen against a cold, night, desert sky. And what a magnificent voice it is.
For me, "Elemental" does not evoke the emotional tugs of "The Visit", another of the artist's CDs reviewed by me on this website. However, the former's program of traditional Celtic ballads exposes the listener to Loreena's incredible talent as a singer and musician. (I must admit here that I consider Barbra Streisand to have the most perfect voice I've ever heard. That likely makes me "square". However, more to the point of this review, Loreena is a very close second, in my opinion, in terms of vocal purity.)
The best reasons to buy this CD are tracks 5 and 8. The former, "Carrighfergus", is a duet by tenor Cedric Smith and McKennitt. It's more of a showcase for Smith - a relatively short, but beautifully intense, ballad of lost love. Track 8, "Come By the Hills", is a soulful tribute to a wild and mountainous region of the British Isles which I assume to be the Scottish Highlands, though it's not identified specifically as such. In any case, I've been to the Highlands, and the song fits.
If you've not previously had the privilege of listening to this amazing Canadian vocalist, then "Elemental" is an excellent introduction.
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Celtic Tunes with a Twist
2 Dec 1999
Format:Audio CD
One of Loreena McKennitt's earlier albums, "Elemental" is a beautiful album of classic and new Celtic songs and poetry. The overall tone is light, like the air after a storm, and wonderful for late-night relaxing. While this album remains purely Celtic in tone (rather than adding in Spanish or Indian elements as "The Mask and the Mirror" and "The Book of Secrets" do), Ms. McKennitt slips expectational boundaries with stunning success in "Carrighfergus" (playing harmony to a gentleman's voice) and in the passionate and rumbling "Lullaby" (picking drops of notes beneath the literal recitition of a poem by Blake). And like Blake's "Songs of Innocence and Experience," Ms. McKennitt weaves together love and death, elation and remorse as common themes in all her songs. An altogether ethereal collection.
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