Like many of my fellow Americans, I first heard Irish traditional music via the recordings of the Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem. I didn't start paying concentrated attention, however, until the 1970s when "Celtic music" -- more a marketing category than an actual musical form -- found an international audience. "Celtic" mostly denoted the similar but not identical folk music of two countries, Ireland and Scotland, only now set in band-based, semi-orchestral arrangements. Another effect was to blend vocal and instrumental styles, heretofore largely on separate tracks, into one.

It was an esthetically successful experiment, and a whole lot of impressive recordings, still listenable, were the consequence. But inevitably, tastes moved on. Two recent albums, one by the Ireland-born, New York City-living Vincent Cross and the other by California-born, County Clare-dwelling Cinder Well (the performing name of Amelia Baker), highlight what talented musicians are doing with Irish tradition at the start of the third decade of the 21st century.

In his Old Songs for Modern Folk (which I reviewed here on 27 August 2016) Cross revealed himself to be an appealing practitioner of the 1960s-era revival school, incorporating topical, socially conscious lyrics into older melodies. In fact, as I noted, a listener can't help thinking of the early Dylan, not a criticism. The Life & Times of James "The Rooster" Corcoran, though, feels very much a product of 19th-century Irish America. In other words, at least in one's imagination the songs, even the recently composed ones, could have been sung by immigrants (many of them squatters) still carrying the music of the Old Country but struggling to find their way on the hard streets of old New York.

The title character, who lived between 1820 and 1900, arrived in America in the mid-1840s. After a few years in New Orleans, he relocated to New York City to become both an advocate for poor Irish immigrants and an organized-crime boss. It is said that only his wife, known variously as Katherine and Kathleen, did not fear him. Cross, among Corcoran's descendants, sums up his ancestor's complicated life and personality thus: He'd help you out if he could/ But he'd never spare the rod. Basically, he was someone you'd stay away from if you had the choice. In Herbert Asbury's famous The Gangs of New York (1928) his street outfit, called Corcoran's Roosters, is mentioned in connection with its bloody squabbles with competitors, though Asbury erroneously gives him the first name "Tommy."

Except in a couple of songs ("A Man After Me Own Heart" and "King Corcoran") Cross devotes little attention to strictly biographical matters; thus his recording is more "times" than "life." Both music and performance are exceptionally vivid, however. Cross, who learned concertina for the occasion, plays alongside a small ensemble of in-the-tradition vocalists and instrumentalists who make every cut shine and count. A particular standout is from an authentic mid-century broadside, "Albert W. Hicks," about the foul deeds and resulting capital punishment (in 1860) of the real-life pirate/serial killer. Don't expect the usual sentimentalized criminal here. Cross sets it to the "Parting Glass" melody, never known to fail.

His solid grasp of Irish music translates into consistent delight on the listener's end. Of the traditional material here it is the melodies, not of course the words newly set to them, that strike the chords of memory. Only "Creole Girl," aka "The Lakes of Pontchartrain," is immediately recognizable on both sides of the equation, and Cross and company turn in a particularly gripping version. Though there is such a thing as just another album of Irish folk music, Life & Times will never be mistaken for it.

I read here that "Cinder Well" came into being because of Amelia Baker's involvement in a "doom folk project." Until reading that, I had never encountered "doom" in front of "folk" before, and certainly not as something attached to a musical subgenre. Still, assuming this isn't a typo in which "doomed" was intended, I will take it as a healthy sign that young musicians reviving folk music for a new generation -- there are, relatively speaking, a bunch of them -- are applying new approaches and flexing creative muscles. No Summer, as the title implies (and could easily signify this summer of death and darkness), is not a cheerful recording. You could even call it doomy.

It has received a fair amount of critical attention, for reasons evident on first hearing. The musicality (shaped by Baker and two accompanists) is confident, the original songs capably -- if at times perhaps severely -- crafted. One immediately respects the recording. It is not immediately clear, however, if one is going to enjoy it. The enjoyment, as Bertie Wooster might put it, is not a thing of the moment. It's like a demanding literary novel which perseverance rewards and into which one is swept in due course.

A guitarist, keyboardist and fiddler, Baker was drawn from her native West Coast to Ireland's western outpost, though County Clare and California are hardly alike. Attracted by the continuing vitality of Ireland's native musical traditions, she moved to a tiny town which, from her references to it in the songs, you'd think consisted solely of a pub, a church and a long-abandoned lunatic asylum. The music has you imagining her wandering the streets alone under foreboding evening skies, a stranger adrift in a strange land. Thus, one is a little startled to read (in the accompanying promo sheet) of her doing something in the company of "local friends."

Though it takes some getting used to, No Summer feels less forbidding the more one listens to it. It helps when one realizes that Baker's lyrics owe as much to Irish poetry as to its folk songs. (It's also true that a decent proportion of old Irish pieces began as literary poems before being adapted to traditional melodies.) Baker is also adept at American songs and tunes, of which two of the former and one of the latter show up here.

These songs are immediately traceable to Roscoe Holcomb and Jean Ritchie, two leading carriers of the Appalachian sound. Probably if you haven't heard Holcomb's "Wandering Boy," you'll be more wowed than I am by her vocal performance. Yes, it is impressive in a sense -- you need a rare set of pipes if you are even to attempt it -- but Holcomb's interpretation is so definitive that the song should be left permanently in his custody. Like Tim Eriksen, another ordinarily strong vocalist who has dared to trod behind Holcomb, her fidelity to the original includes the very first word, which happens to be "as," making about three syllables out of the vowel. If you've heard it in the original Kentuckian, you will remain standing.

This is not exactly a fatal error, but it feels like an error nonetheless, compounded by its being chosen as the opening cut. It would have been better if it had been, say, the fifth number or the final one, if Baker was indeed determined to include it at risk of irritating a yipping dog such as the undersigned. But I concede that if you haven't been long familiar with Holcomb, none of this will mean anything to you.

The next song, Cinder Well's own "No Summer," has apparently struck everybody who's heard it, if I can judge from its frequency of citation in the reviews I've seen. You will hear why should this album find its way into your listening space. Though Baker wrote it before COVID plagued all our lives and defined this dismal season, it could be the theme song for that occasion. "Old Enough" is as close as she gets to a conventionally romantic song, which is not at all close; the song conjures up distance, uncertainty, suspicion, the joyful interludes only passing and tentative. But somehow it surrounds you, and it sure sounds beautiful.

Eventually, just about all of No Summer does that to you.