Let's start with two complaints:

The first: This is only Daithi Sproule's second solo album. Such paltry output amounts to an outrage on lovers of fine music everywhere. The second: The Crow in the Sun, whose elegant beauty nobody with ears will fail to appreciate, has none of Sproule's vocals, this in spite of the truth that he's as good a ballad singer as any Irish artist currently breathing, as witness his one other disc, A Heart Made of Glass (Green Linnet, 1993), and his all too rare vocals with Altan. Is there a better version of "The Bonny Bunch of Roses" anywhere?

Lovers of Irish traditional music know Sproule as the lead guitarist -- at the job more than two decades now -- for that nation's most celebrated folk band after the Chieftains. (Though born in Northern Ireland, Sproule has lived in the Twin Cities for 30 years, the one Altan member who doesn't reside in Ireland.) His spare, stately playing is a sound so distinctive that even non-musicians like me recognize it instantly. On Crow, he collects tradition-inflected instrumental originals that he's composed from 1970 to the present. "Johnny Seoighe," a traditional piece, and "Young Catherine," from the pen of the legendary harper Turlough O'Carolan, are the two non-originals. His guitar alone carries the music, which in this instance needs no more.

The folk music of the British Isles did not meet the guitar until the mid-20th-century revivals, of course, but masters like Sproule make the two feel like a natural match. Two of the most influential figures in that transition, Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, taught and cast their shadow over a whole generation of acoustic guitarists. Their influence is apparent (and acknowledged) in some of the earlier pieces here. Later, Sproule went on to absorb more -- "A Shot of Ry," last name Cooder, nods to one of them -- and to refine his own delicate finger-picking, with classical and, more faintly, blues echoes, into his own unique approach.

It is grand and glorious stuff, and I've listened to Crow repeatedly since it arrived in a package from Rambles.NET a few weeks ago. I just hope we don't have to wait another 15 years for the next one. And next time -- there will be a next time, I hope -- I would be thrilled to hear some ballads along with the instrumentals. Crow will do for now, however, and it does very well indeed.

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