text: Critical reception Watermark received generally positive reviews from critics. In an April 1988 review, Hot Press reporter Liam Fay wrote the album is "A lifetime's worth of sights, sounds and experiences condescend into an orderly and lucid aural aquarium". He praised her orchestral-like vocals on "Cursum Perficio", the instrumentation on "Storms in Africa", "The Longships", and "Exile", and the "exquisite liqueous pop" of "Orinoco Flow" which, as he predicted, "should be a hit single". Fay was aware that lyrics in such types of music can be the weak point, but deemed Roma's lyrics are "integral and are ideally sculpted to allow Enya's voice to float between the gaps and pauses". Fay also felt "Na Laetha Geal M'óige", "On Your Shore", and "Evening Falls..." sound "too hymn-like for their own good", and pale in comparison to the rest of the album and Ryan's production "reveals a different hue" each time one listens to it. Joe Brown praised it in The Washington Post, calling it "a lovely collection of quasi-mystical pop" that is "somewhere outside of the pop mainstream but steering clear of the sugary shoals of New Age". He described "Orinoco Flow" as "lushly romantic" and praised the production on "Evening Falls..." and "Miss Clare Remembers", which evoke a "cathedral ambience, with multitracked choirs and shimmering echo".
  A review by Bill Henderson was printed in the Orlando Sentinel, with Henderson giving the album four stars out of five and writing: "Delicate. That adjective describes the melodies of Enya" whose "art becomes the sum of its parts – as light as a whisper, yet as strong as a scream". He compared her methods to English singer Claire Hamill but "much better", and praised her personal songs like "On Your Shore" to invite the listener to recall homes of their past, "a bittersweet journey". While the instrumental tracks to him are "simple and pleasant musical ideas", they are overshadowed by her vocal tracks, as "Her singing is so strong that it is painfully obvious when she isn't". He deemed "Na Laetha Geal M'oige" "one of the most beautiful melodies recorded by anyone recently" that is sung with such conviction, the Irish lyrics do not affect the music.