Customer Reviews

Elemental (Bonus Dvd)

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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.

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.

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.

Her first recording is very naked and basic compared to everything that followed. It is mostly traditional folk songs, with a few embellishments from Loreena. She features her harp playing on most (all) of the songs as well as her exquisite voice. As much as I like all of her albums, this is my favourite! So simple and hauntingly beautiful, I wish she would return to this sound every once and a while.

This is a superb CD, and it makes a wonderful lullaby album, as I discovered with my daughter. Every song on it (except the last, which I find to be out of place) is gorgeous in its lyrics, melody, and arrangement. It is quite hard for me to choose a favorite, but I believe "She Moved Through the Fair" to be exceptional. Loreena McKennitt's choice to make the piece essentially a cappella adds to its haunting quality -- what "musical" sounds she included (the birds and the bells) are perfect. I listen to this CD every day and look forward to hearing it each time.

First, by way of a disclaimer, I would like to be able to claim that I have in fact been a fan of Loreena McKennitt right from the beginning of her long and illustrious career, but alas! The sad truth is that I only discovered her a few short years ago thanks to a friend who had her "The Visit" CD playing in his SUV when he picked me up for lunch. Needless to say, I was blown away by what I heard as we tooled down the snowy streets of Cambridge past the ivied halls of Harvard on our way to a local spaghetti place. Having already become a confirmed fan of Celtic music with Irish artists like Van Morrison and Clannad, I quickly bought all of her CDs, and as a result have come to admire her work a great deal. Needless to say, this particular album, her debut album of "Elemental", is a personal favorite.

Her voice is hard to describe, other than to say it has a haunting, ethereal quality that is the perfect vehicle for her wide-ranging compositions and arrangements. It is hard to classify her work, because it does encompass quite arrange of different genres. It is safe to say that she draws from an amazingly rich store of different kinds of traditional music, and seems to breathe her own unifying force in delivering them in a manner that is at once both traditional and innovative. Thus, from the opening strains of the "Blacksmith" through the mystical treatment of "The Lark In The Clear Air" to the ending sounds of "Lullaby", the work seems to thread itself together seamlessly, even though the sources for the individual songs is often quite different. The only way to properly appreciate her wondrous abilities is to experience them. Otherwise, I feel like the guy trying to convince his lady friend to take her first roller-coaster ride. You have to explode down all the way from the top of the edifice to understand the rush. So it is with our lady Loreena. Buy it and get ready for the rush!

This was Loreena's first album and already it proves that Loreena is a breath of fresh air in the already stale world of music. The tracks "Kellswater" and "Blacksmith" are just wonderful on this album. Loreena's voice is so unique that when she shifts notes it produces a "soaring" quality like a bird. If this is your first McKennitt CD you won't be disappointed!

I'm only sixteen, butI love Loreena. This is the latest of her albums I've gotten and I think it is very good. This music is very simple, but also light and soft. Her accordian and harp play were at her best! This album also has many of her lesser known really good songs like "Kellswater" and "Banks of Claudy", which is my favorite song on the album. I also really loved "Lullaby" because it was really beautiful. Loreena's strong saprano voice was also at her best (she sounds a lot like Norwegian singer Sissel Kyrkjebo). I also like her version of "She Moved Through The Fair", which Charlotte Church also did a nice version of. A true fan can not be without this album and if you don't like this album, shame on you!

If you click on my name you can find other things I like and a few things I don't like. I also like Enya, Maire Brennan, Clannad, Sissel, Charlotte Church, Dadawa,and others. I recommend them all!

This is Loreena McKennitt unplugged, on what is--to my knowledge--her first album. These are gentle, wistful songs, primarily minor in flavor and performed in a fairly traditional manner. "Elemental" is a short CD, only about 33 minutes long. Eight of its nine songs are vocals--mostly Loreena singing in her sweet, lilting voice to her own harp accompaniments, although gentle additions of acoustic bass, accordion, synthesizer, cello, guitar and occasional multitracks of her own voice sometimes enhance the pieces as well. "Carrighfergus" is a duet with singer and guitarist Cedric Smith, and Lullaby is a poem by William Blake, read by Douglas Campbell and accompanied by McKennitt's vocalise and instrumentation. Other guest artists include cellist Pat Mullin and acoustic bass player George Greer. There's none of the bodaceous intensity and world music instrumentations of McKennitt's later work (like "The Mask and the Mirror" and "The Book of Secrets") but a delicate, dreamy magic drifts through this album that is delightfully restful and soothing. And her deft, delicate, evocative arrangements of harp and harmony, even at this early stage of her career, stand out as something special. Follow Loreena McKennitt's development as a musician and composer by collecting all her wonderful works! Her next release after "Elemental" was "To Drive the Cold Winter Away," followed by "Parallel Dreams." Try also the work of Kim Robertson and Aine Minogue, two more elegantly innovative harpists and composers.

Like many people I had never heard Loreena McKennitt until the Book of Secrets received some air play. I fell in love with her complex melodies and haunting voice. Since I have bought more of her music. Elemental blew me away. The clearness of her voice (from the mid 1980's) and the very simple melodies are incredible. The CD contains 3 of my all time favorites songs out of the hundreds I own. I am mystified how a woman can sing such simple lyrics yet be so captivating. So many female singers will sing and behave in very crude ways to attempt to be sexy. None of them can hold a candle to Loreena. I look forward to hearing more of Loreena's music. She does well at adapting her music to her voice over time. Now I wish my wife had consented to name our daughter my grandmother named Lorena.