Warner Bros
Christmas Music, 2008

Contrary to how Christmas albums are typically the belch of an artist’s waning career—half-hearted, cash-grabby releases to fulfill contractual obligations—one would think Enya would be perfect for such an endeavor.

After all, her music has always teetered on the edge of Christmas cheer: ethereal, twinkly, full of blissed-out harmonies designed to soothe the kind of raw nerves that arise when extended family overstays their welcome.

Sadly, And Winter Came… heralds no such joy.

The problem begins the moment the opening track, also the title track, plays and you find yourself thinking, “Wait, isn’t this just Shepherd Moons…?”

And then it hits you: this whole album is basically a Greatest Hits compilation… if the “hits” had been fed through an AI trained exclusively on past Enya albums. It’s as if Enya and her longtime collaborators, the Ryan duo, have taken bits and pieces of their previous songs, blended them together in a very expensive, mist-shrouded cauldron, and presented them as new material.

White Is in the Winter Night tries to inject some festivity, but even that sounds like it was recorded inside a snow globe—pretty, but weirdly lifeless.

Trains and Winter Rains is probably the most upbeat track, yet it still floats in a dreamlike haze where no actual trains exist. One might expect a rousing Celtic-infused holiday anthem or even a tearjerker ballad, but the whole thing just drifts by like a particularly forgettable department store playlist.

In fact, this album sounds more like a contractual obligation than most Christmas albums. It’s almost as if Warner Bros called Enya up after three years, reminding her that she still owed them an album, to which she responded, “Oh, snap!” before hastily assembling And Winter Came… over the course of a weekend.

For the best of Enya’s winter magic, stick to her first three albums because, quite frankly, you’ll get the same vibe and better music without having to sit through this snoozefest.