Elemental [Original recording remastered]

Loreena McKennitt | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (November 14, 2006)
• Original Release Date: 1985
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Label: Verve
• ASIN: B000J233SU
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (66 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #22,846 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #51 in Music > World Music > Celtic > Fusion
  • #52 in Music > World Music > Celtic > New Age
  • #73 in Music > New Age > Celtic New Age

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Always good, July 8, 2005

By 

C. B Collins Jr. (Atlanta, GA United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Elemental (Bonus Dvd) (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.

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A voice as clear and sharp as cold crystal., May 12, 2000

By 

Joseph Haschka (Glendale, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Elemental (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:

5.0 out of 5 stars Celtic Tunes with a Twist, December 2, 1999

By 

Emily Snyder - See all my reviews

This review is from: Elemental (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.