The November 1988 edition of "Top" magazine, run by Tower Records, included a review by Simon Young who thought Enya had produced "a fine, peaceful New Age album, which works best when her voice-from-heaven is matched with subtle electronic pools of sound and layer upon layer of breathy, Clannadesque backing vocals". Jonathan Takiff, for the "Philadelphia Daily News", started his review with: "When this old world starts getting you down, just lay on ... "Watermark" ... and drift away to a blissful state", of which Enya brings a "fusion of old sod balladry and modem technology to another plateau, with a magical, mysterious brew that could be dubbed "New Age Irish" or "Celtic Ambient"". Takiff picked "Orinoco Flow" as the stand out song, and called "River" a "blissful intrumental". He concluded with: "There's nothing uptempo to ever jar the hypnotic ebb and flow. Just lay back and let this music roll all over you." In a review printed in "The Boston Globe", Steve Morse called the record a "series of lush dreamscapes that team the vocal beauty of Irish traditional song with multitracked synthesizer tones", and compared it to works from fellow ambient and new age artists Jean-Michel Jarre, Vangelis and Brian Eno. Its sound, he thought, is "beautiful" and noticed a recurrence of the imagery of water throughout. Morse concluded, "This is an album of atmospheres – true mood music for the soul".