Dublin's John Doyle, who has performed with just about every prominent Irish folk musician (and more, including Americans Liz Carroll, Mary Chapin Carpenter and Tim O'Brien), is best known on this side of the pond for his years with the innovative Solas. He left the group, currently inactive, some years ago but has remained busy, for two years (2008-2010) as musical director for Joan Baez's band, otherwise as a solo act, ensemble member and studio player.

Every once in a while he releases an album under his own name. This is his third for Compass, the previous one issued nine years ago. Doyle is a guitarist of distinction and discernment. If you know of him, I don't have to tell you that you will want to hear The Path of Stone. On a deceptively simple, skeletal affair consisting almost entirely of original material, Doyle is sometimes accompanied by two other acoustic masters, Kevin Muiderman and Jordan McConnell, on a set of trad-flavored songs and instrumentals. Only one is actually traditional, the opener, an obscure ballad titled "The Rambler from Clare," which Doyle puts into an affecting contemporary arrangement.

The title song, its inspiration from a Yeats line ("I have been in the Path of Stone and the Wood of Thorns"), communicates a beautiful gloom. Its title notwithstanding, "Sing Merrily to Me" is even more morose but just as lovely. In "Her Long Hair Flowing Down" Doyle imagines an Irish wayfarer caught up in the California Gold Rush and looking homeward to lost and happier times. His writing is consistently of a high order, never less than intricately crafted and extraordinarily moving.

Nearly an hour long (a rarity these days), The Path of Stone does not show off or ever falter. As I listen to it, I think of Scotland's Archie Fisher and England's (though Scottish born) Bert Jansch (d. 2011), two other singer/guitarists steeped in traditions they honored and redefined for urban modernity. Though a generation younger, Doyle feels something like their Irish equivalent. In any event, once heard Path will linger long in memory.