"The Wild Colonial Boy," Australia's most famous bushranger ballad, is as likely to be sung by Irish and Irish-American singers as by Australians. There is no firm consensus on the ballad's historical origins, but one reasonable guess is that the title character was Jack Donohue, killed in a gun battle with police near Sydney in 1830. It is known that a song composed soon after his death, "Bold Jack Donohue," roused the ire of the authorities, who banned it as seditious.

"Bhoys" -- or "b'hoys" -- came out of the early 19th-century New York City street culture. They were working-class dandies who evolved into violent gangs, though not before being romanticized by Walt Whitman, who wrote of them: First to ride, to fight, to hit the bull's eye, to sail a skiff, to sing a song or play on the banjo....

In the present instance, the Wild Colonial Bhoys are two Minneapolis Irish folk musicians, guitarists Adam Coolong and (the obviously non-Celtic monikered) Geno Carlson. The Twin Cities -- St. Paul more so than Minneapolis -- harbor a rich Irish culture and musicians to match, including the one Altan member who does not live in Ireland, singer/guitarist Daithe Sproule. Irish in America is the Bhoys' third album. I have not heard the other two, and while I am a fellow Minnesotan, I learned of the Bhoys' existence only recently.

In the Pogues' wake a movement that eventually adopted the somewhat misleading name "Celtic rock" has arisen. One might presume that any rock band, however fundamentally American in its sound (e.g., U2) from a Celtic nation could be called a "Celtic rock" outfit. There is even an Internet Celtic-rock radio station, playing not Irish generic-rock but jittery, punked-up pub standards (mostly from the Clancy Brothers and Dubliners songbook) and originals composed in the style. Overwhelmingly, as with the Pogues, the songs celebrate drunkenness and other liquor-fueled antisocial behavior. The other tradition of Irish drinking songs -- the mournful, morning-after complaints -- is nowhere apparent. What I've heard of it tells me it's mostly dance music, best enjoyed with a serious buzz on in the company of flailing, sweating bodies. Otherwise, it's good for about an hour or two's listening pleasure, by which time its limitations as a musical form in a non-pub context become all too evident.

If you think this is all leading up to a pan, you are mistaken. This is a confident and accomplished album by a couple of talented singers and players, backed by some of the Upper Midwest's best Irish musicians, not the least of them the venerable uillean-pipes master Tom Dahill, who has championed traditional Irish music in Minnesota and Wisconsin for decades. When the songs -- none traditional, but all nodding to traditional models -- start to rock, one is likely to think of what Fairport Convention might have sounded like if this very English band were Irish. I have nothing against the Pogues -- in fact, I rather like them -- but I am not convinced the world needs dozens of bands whose purpose is to replicate them.

Of course, the opening cut, "Hair of the Dog" (by Coolong and Carlson), is very much a Pogues-like piece rhythmically and thematically, and it may lead you to anticipate more of the same. Then, unexpectedly and even oddly, the next cut turns out to be Nanci Griffith's earnest anti-racist anthem "It's a Hard Life Wherever You Go." It's not a bad song, and I heartily endorse its point of view, and it's done well enough, but its presence here -- even with its Irish geographical and musical settings -- may lead you to some reflexive head-scratching. Lest things get too serious, however, the Bhoys follow it with another original, the very witty "Once," which manages to blur the distinction between Celtic and Buddy Holly musical traditions. Another original, "Better Off," amusingly drops in an allusion or two to the Beatles' "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da." And "Days of Rage" is pure Irish Dylan.

The rest of the album alternates between acoustic and electric material. It all manages to be of a piece, however -- in other words, a 21st-century take on Ireland's native sounds. Original or cover, each song stands by its distinctive self, each with its own sensibility and personality, yet linked in an unbroken circle. Perhaps the best of them is the ambitious, poignant title song -- about precisely what its title indicates -- performed as a tasteful, unadorned acoustic folk ballad. Any musician looking for a terrific new old-sounding Irish song to add to the repertoire needs look no further.

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