The Good: Sounds good, Lyrics, vocals and instrumentals are interesting
The Bad: Instrumentals overbear the vocals, A little short
The Basics: Loreena McKennitt's The Mask And Mirror is good, but it prioritized style over substance, which fails to impress me (much)!
I seem, over the years, to have developed something of a love/hate relationship with the music of Loreena McKennitt. She is, to be sure, a wonderful singer and instrumentalist, but she seems obsessed with obscuring her voice with her music. She is an artist who puts sound before any sort of message and because she produced her album The Mask And Mirror, which I am currently failing to enjoy, I am not entirely convinced that she is not a poor producer.
With only eight tracks, one might be impressed that Loreena McKennitt managed to extend the album to over fifty-two minutes worth of music, but I find myself underwhelmed. In fact, I find myself wanting more . . . and different. But this is McKennitt's musical vision. McKennitt only wrote lyrics for three of the eight songs, but she took traditional songs or poems from Yates and speeches from Shakespeare and adapted them for the other five songs. She is credited with writing all of the music and she provides the lead vocals on all of the tracks. As well, she is an accomplished instrumentalist, performing on The Mask And Mirror on dumbeg, keyboards, accordion, synthesizers, harp, piano and organ pipes.
As well, Loreena McKennitt produced The Mask And Mirror, which is probably where I have the biggest beef with her. McKennitt can sing, she can play instruments. She cannot, apparently, mix them to save her own sound. For those unfamiliar with the works of Loreena McKennitt, McKennitt's sound is a mix of classical and modern instruments to create what some might call a contemporary Renaissance Faire sound. For those looking to mix pop and classical, McKennitt seems to be the reigning goddess. And if she wanted to stick to either of those or both and let the sound be the deal, that would be fine. But instead, she has lyrics. McKennitt produces her album such that the lyrics are sublimated below the instrumentals.
Take, for example, "Marrakesh Night Market." This song features quite a bit of percussion (including two drums and "percussion" credited), balalaika, fiddles, bass, synthesizers and electric guitars. There is a deep, pounding rhythm throughout and against that is only McKennitt's soprano wailing voice. I've listened to this album at least eight times today alone (my mother has brought this album with us on several trips in the past) and I know the sound of this song, but I have never once caught a single line McKennitt sings. Come to think of it, I've never caught a single word she has sung in this song! That is how far below the instrumentals the vocals are mixed. Her voice is there, it's part of the mix, but it's not even one of the top three sounds and McKennitt's lyrics are completely obscured. If I didn't go lightly on Tori Amos for the way she sings high and beautifully but completely incomprehensibly through most of Little Earthquakes (reviewed here!), I'm not going lightly on Loreena McKennitt when she does essentially the same thing!
The real shame of it is that it appears McKennitt actually has something to say (or sing) and the lyrics in the liner notes to this album are not bad. In fact, on "Marrakesh Night Market," one of the tracks McKennitt actually wrote, she tells a storysong that is both ethereal and deep when she wrote "Would you like my mask? / Would you like my mirror? / Cries the man in the shadowing hood / You can look at yourself / You can look at each other / Or you can look at the face of your god / The stories are woven / And fortunes are told / The truth is measured by the weight of your gold." And none of that is comprehensible from her vocal performance and the way - even though her pitch is great and forceful - it is mixed to be drown out by the instrumentals.
McKennitt not only has a great sense of classic sound, but she does have a wonderful mind for creating classic sounding verse. Traditional songs, like "The Dark Night Of The Soul" and "The Bonny Swans" have such similar structures and resonances to McKennitt's own verses. So, for example, it is easy to believe that "Full Circle" might come from fifteenth century Spain - which is the sound this album is attempting to evoke, it's something of a concept album - with its lines "Somewhere the sun rose, o'er dunes in the desert / Such was the stillness, I ne'er felt before / Was this the question, pulling, pulling, pulling you / In your heart, in your soul, did you find rest there?" McKennitt asks timeless questions about Man's relationship with god, nature and each other without making them sound like modern questions. She recaptures the innocence portrayed in ancient texts in her poetry and it works perfectly for the songs!
On The Mask And Mirror, Loreena McKennitt is devoted (some might say "obsessed") with creating a strong sense of time, place and mood. This is an album devoted to 15th Century Spain and recreating the excitement and mystery of that time and place for a modern audience with modern instruments. Even when she is using electric guitars and keyboards on "The Mystic's Dream," her lyrics (when they may be heard) succeed in setting the mood and transporting the listener to the desired time and place. Indeed, it is her lyrics "A clouded dream on an earthly night / Hangs upon the crescent moon / A voiceless song in an ageless light / Sings at the coming dawn / Birds in flight are calling there / Where the heart moves the stones / It's there that my heart is longing / All for the love of you" ("The Mystic's Dream") that suck the listener right in.
And despite the mixing problems, Loreena McKennitt has an amazing voice. She is solidly soprano and her vocals are slow, high and haunting throughout this album. She rings out clearest on "The Two Trees" and that is beautiful and hard to dismiss.
Ultimately, though, I want to hear what an artist has to say and my "recommend" is a razor decision. This is an average album, high on mood, light on meaning. McKennitt's musical storytelling ability is obscured by her obsession with prioritizing the impressive backing instruments and the richness of the album might make it ideal for virtually every medieval movie's soundtrack (almost any one of these songs is easy to envision accompanying a hero on his horse galloping across a glade), but not for telling an actual story. The result is that this is good, if not great, mood music, but it is not indispensable.
For other Loreena McKennitt albums, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Elemental
To Drive The Cold Winter Away
Parallel Dreams
The Visit
The Book Of Secrets
A Midwinter Night’s Dream
5.5/10
For other music reviews, be sure to check out my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing!
© 2012, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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