Loreena McKennitt is a sorceress. Her newest album, "the mask and the mirror," is steeped in the imagery of her Gaelic heritage. Her songs take you from a world where music is industrialized and prefabricated to an older, richer time when music and magic, legend and history blend together in the unity of a single ballad.
She adapts lyrics from writers like Yeats and St. John of the Cross as well as traditional Irish tales and her own original work. These are wrapped in a musical blend of the modern and the arcane.
Her Celtic harp merges seamlessly with fiddles, balalaika, and accordions as well as her moody, atmospheric synthesized sounds to create a soundtrack that is convincing and captivating. Her voice is haunting and enchantingly melodic. It is an uncommon voice, strikingly clear and pure.
This is the kind of album that would make a good soundtrack for "Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves." In her notes, she explains her influences as reflecting an interest in the Crusades. It is precisely that cultural exchange that is reflected in her musical styles on this album. On this recording she merges her native folk traditions with influences from Middle Eastern sources, and her vocal performance of these exotic melodies brings the two traditions together in remarkable new ways.
From the slowly winding "The Dark Night of the Soul" to the driving, unsettling "Santiago," McKennitt displays a virtuoso range of expression. There are dark passages of chanting, offset with percussive backgrounds that reflect bright and wild scenes in her fourth track, titled "Marrakesh Night Market." It is this increasing rhythmic diversity that differentiates this album from her earlier albums, particularly her 1991 release, "The Visit."
Somehow these foreign influences do nothing to lessen the impact of her distinctive sound. She still manages to conjure images of forgotten druidic rites and sacred standing stones, which isn't to say that this is music to be played at Halloween parties to scare the kids. It's an intellectual music steeped in history, and a beautiful music that can exist totally independently of the lyrics.
This is an album for the connoisseur of Irish music, the medieval enthusiast, the fantasy-fiction reader, or average college students interested in broadening their horizons in surprising and interesting musical directions.
Review copy courtesy of The Dartmouth Bookstore.
