Even if this is not a great album, it's a welcome one, and not just because it celebrates the happy fact of Gordon Lightfoot's continued existence. It also offers promise, one hopes, of better things to come. It is at least the ghost of Lightfoot's best work, those memorable recordings he did in the 1960s for United Artists and in the early to mid-70s for Reprise. After that, the sound faded off too often into what struck this listener as listless adult-contemporary pop, with arrangements both overdone and now horribly dated. Little of that shows up here, which is good news indeed.

On Harmony, Lightfoot is back to a sparer acoustic sound akin to the folk textures of the classic catalogue. Among the good songs here, not the least is the title tune, which I take to be about Lightfoot's fight to regain not just his life but his muse. "Flyin' Blind" is a nicely imagined modern ballad about a pilot's perilous flight over the arctic wastes. "Shellfish" is an exceptional song, vivid and moving, and the album's artistic high point.

On the other hand, "Inspiration Lady" is as uninspired as its title suggests, the one purely disposable cut. "Couchiching" suffers from some excruciatingly careless writing; it pains the ear to hear couplets that rhyme "hit you with a ping" and "your thing" with "Couchiching" (a lake in Ontario near Lightfoot's birthplace). The song itself comes across as more advertising jingle than anything else. It didn't have to and wouldn't have if Lightfoot had put more effort into the writing.

Though uneven, sometimes a bit tentative sounding, Harmony has its pleasures, and it grows on you. It marks, if not a full return to form, at least a solid step in that direction.

In October 2002 James Talley and his band toured Italy. This satisfying CD captures the best of the performances, mostly of such Talley classics as "W. Lee O'Daniel and the Light Crust Doughboys," "Sometimes I Think About Suzanne," "Tryin' Like the Devil," and "Richland, Washington," among others. He and the musicians are in fine form. The audience is enthusiastic, but never intrusive or overbearing. This is in all senses more engaging than your average live recording.

What makes Journey exceptional, however, are the new songs, in particular "The Song of Chief Joseph" and "I Saw the Buildings." Though perhaps no further proof is needed of his mastery of the composer's art -- Talley, who in the 1970s helped invent the genre now called alt.country or Americana, has been creating songs of power and subtlety for many years -- these are among the most exquisite ballads of our time. "Chief Joseph" retells, from the title character's point of view, a tragic episode from the Indian wars of the American West. If there is a better song about that sad era in our history, I have yet to hear it. The deceptively languid narrative unravels, with perfect lyrical and musical restraint, as no more than a bare-bones recitation of the events in question. Because the song lets the story tell itself, it resists the protest singer's temptation to preach and shout, and thus becomes a masterpiece of understated heartbreak and dark beauty.

So is "I Saw the Buildings." Contrast this thoughtful, 9/11-inspired reflection with the jingoistic, chest-thumping rants that spewed out of Nashville in the wake of that terrible event, and you will know the difference between morally serious art and bone-headed bloodthirst. Bob Dylan would be proud to have written this song, if he could have. Ten minutes long, "Buildings" wanders from the devastation of the Manhattan of September 11, 2001, to the broken landscape of the larger world, where despair and pain spawn "hatred stronger than life." The verses return periodically to the haunting refrain, "The stars come out at night/ And the moon shines so bright/ And the mystery holds/ Which no one knows/ And our hopes and dreams sustain us." And so does James Talley's magnificent music.

There is no finer young singer of traditional American music than Tim Eriksen. His performance is austere, even demanding, and it is more chill wind than warm breeze. He sings inside a 19th Century of sheer existential intensity, conjuring up visions of a Southern church of Sacred Harp singers or a blood-soaked Civil War battlefield or a murderer's icy heart, and confronting life at its most elemental in its friendships, loves, hates, mortality, and fate. His gaze is straight, and it never flinches.

Eriksen's repertoire mostly eschews familiar titles from the American folk canon. Only "Careless Love," "Two Sisters," and "Omie Wise" leap to easy recognition, though his readings of each are distinctive. The first, however, is one of the rare moments that betray Eriksen's linkage to the modern folk revival. The languid arrangement brings to mind the work of the brilliant (though sadly no longer active) British ballad singer/guitarist Nic Jones. The original "A Tiny Crown" is slightly reminiscent of another British folk guitarist, Bert Jansch (or, for that matter, the early, Jansch-besotted Donovan, before he went all wacky). You need not have heard of Jones or Jansch to be moved -- or, more likely, unsettled -- by what Eriksen does with these songs.

In the purely technical or aural sense the sound is crisp as a gorgeous fall day. Yes, the album was recorded in the basement studio of my old friend, the Twin Cities guitarist and producer Dakota Dave Hull, but I would admire it wherever it came from. If 2004 ushers into the world a superior example of hard-core folk at its most brilliantly flinty, I will be very, very surprised.

In a very happy move Smithsonian Folkways has taken to plumbing Folkways' deep catalog for a series of "Classic" anthologies of American roots music. The previous five are variously focused on Southern styles: blues, bluegrass, and mountain music. In the sixth of the series, SF turns to a non-Southern genre which has passed into neglect in recent years: songs of salt- and freshwater sailors. These are not field recordings, but the work largely of revival singers, who include such familiar names as Dave Van Ronk, Paul Clayton, and Lead Belly, along with others not so well known. They are taken from albums released between 1951 and 1997.

This is, as one would expect, a satisfying collection, not just for the performances but for the usual well-informed annotations and documentation. This grizzled folk fan learned a few things I didn't know, such as that "Run, Come See Jerusalem" -- once a folk-scare standard, done nicely here by the X-Seamen's Institute -- was written in 1929 by Blind Blake. No, not that Blind Blake, the bluesman/songster from Florida whose first name was Arthur, but the Bahamian singer Blind Blake, born Blake Higgs. I also learned that "Hilo" in the song "Johnny's Gone to Hilo" (here "Tommy's Gone to Hilo") is not in Hawaii, but in Peru (the port city of Ilo).

A small number of performances don't move me much. Tom Wisner's original, all-too-well-intentioned "Chesapeake Born" strikes me as purely cornball in that distinctively gooey Pete Seeger sort of way. Alan Mills and the Shanty Men perform in what sounds, at least to my ear, in so stilted, theatrical a fashion as to remind the listener why sea shanteys are so often parodied and ridiculed. (Admittedly, they're here for all of :36, in a mercifully brief "Paddy Doyle's Boots.") Done right, shanteys are wonderfully affecting, and most of the singers here do them proud. There are also a few ocean-going ballads, the standards "Greenland Whale Fisheries," "The Sloop John B," "Lord Franklin," and "The Handsome Cabin Boy," whose subjects range from the wryly comic to the heartbreakingly tragic.

If you already love this sort of thing, you'll want this album. And if you're looking for one representative anthology of maritime folk music to fill a hole in your collection, this one will do just fine.

Grey De Lisle has beauty -- physical and esthetic -- and an exotic, mysterious name and sound. She is also a brilliant mimic. Reread the previous sentence, and see where the emphasis falls. Was it on "brilliant" or "mimic"? If it was the latter, you'll hear the best imitation that will ever be of Dolly Parton at her most traditional-sounding. If your eye fell on "brilliant," you will probably, on hearing the appropriately titled Graceful Ghost (which you can read on two levels; see "brilliant" and "mimic" above), hear something that amounts to a smart, subtle, deeply understood approximation of the old mountain songs and urban parlor ballads that inspired, and comprised the repertoire of, the Carter Family. Even the titles (though in prosaic fact denoting De Lisle originals) -- "The Maple Tree," "Tell Me True," "Turtle Dove," "Black Haired Boy" -- sound like the titles of Carter Family songs from a parallel universe. Actually, "Katy Allen" brings to the astonished senses the notion of an extraordinarily improbable collaboration between the Carter Family and Donovan. All of the songs here are very good for what they are, if you can accept what they are, but long after you've turned off the stereo -- no matter who you are, whatever you think of what's going on here -- it is unlikely that "Katy Allen" will let you be.

Tom Russell's new album is to other Western music what the HBO series Deadwood is to other Western movies: pretty much the antithesis. If Larry McMurtry were a folk singer, this is what he might sound like.

Russell's is not a golden-hued West but a dark, treacherous place full of characters whose self-destructive impulses often overwhelm whatever heroic ones they may possess. His daring reimagining of the Marty Robbins classic "El Paso" is a case in point. His version banishes all the romance of the original, focuses on the young cowboy's pain, and causes us to shake our heads at his suicidal stupidity. More, in other words, as the Old West was really like, a frontier as much psychic as geographic, populated in good part by men and women temperamentally unsuited to live amid civilized order.

Not that the romantic West is entirely absent. "Bucking Horse Moon" could easily be an Ian Tyson song, not the first of Russell's compositions of which that can be said (in any event, Russell and Tyson are occasional collaborators). That's okay. Tyson is as good as they come, and a new Tyson song, even if Tyson didn't happen to write it, is always welcome. More surprising is the stunning version of the mysterious Dylan Western "Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts," which Russell performs in high theatrical fashion in collaboration with Eliza Gilkyson and Joe Ely. Improbably, Russell translates Linda Thompson's fairytale "No Telling" into a hardbitten Western ballad. There is not a single weak cut here. I could not possibly find anything serious to complain about in a singer smart enough to revive the greatest of all dog folk songs, "Old Blue," and then to do it with such good humor and inventiveness.

The most striking of the originals is "The Ballad of Edward Abbey," about the late author and environmentalist. Its first verse parodies the opening words of the grim 19th-Century "The Buffalo Skinners" before going on to portray, in crisp, perfect language, a complex man who championed the Western landscape against those who see it only through a haze of dollar signs. Russell admires Abbey but does him the favor of not sentimentalizing him.

Russell's actorish singing is occasionally mildly distracting, but no matter. He manages a seamless fusion of modern and traditional sensibility -- philosophical as well as musical -- and in the process creates something that can properly be called real art.

Gibb Todd, Brit turned Australian, looks sort of like Kenny Rogers but sounds sort of like Wilf Carter, the legendary Canadian balladeer who (even when marketed as "Montana Slim" here) never got to be a country star in America. Carter sang in a friendly, intimate voice about the charms of Canada's natural landscape and the not always easy lives of the people who populated it. He framed his songs in mostly simple, spare acoustic settings, made strong records, and in no way deserves neglect and obscurity.

Fittingly, Gibb Todd, a Wilf Carter for the Outback, adds Celtic touches to some of the songs. After all, Australian-immigrant music owes much to the Scots and Irish who came, willingly or unwillingly, to the country, and who took old melodies and dropped new stories and exotic-sounding Australian place names inside them. From this disjuncture between the familiar and the, well, odd (at least to the non-Australian) in the bush ballads -- which chronicle the adventures of drovers (cowboys), tramps, rovers, outlaws, soldiers, and tough, unforgettable women -- the listener may experience a delicious sense of psychic dislocation. The effect is like hearing something you know well yet, paradoxically, feeling as if you're hearing it for the first time.

Recorded in Nashville with gifted, sympathetic musicians (including the ubiquitous Tim O'Brien and Stuart Duncan, not to mention the always welcome Danny Thompson), Goin' Home is one gorgeous recording from start to conclusion. Todd's splendid originals are indistinguishable from traditionals. His covers -- at least two of the more recent pieces I recognize from various incarnations of the Battlefield Band -- are perfect. He handles the venerable American folk songs "Don't Put Taxes on the Women" and "Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies" with aplomb, against all odds making them his own.

Even the often-recorded Eric Bogle anti-war anthem "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda" loses none of its power, and seems all too appropriate for this sorry moment in the history of this sorry world. What a delight it is to hear that sturdy old shanty "Cape Cod Girls" -- the one with the "Bound away for Australia" chorus -- again. I last heard it on a mid-1960s Patrick Sky album which, I'm sorry to say, Vanguard has never seen fit to reissue on CD. Todd's own composition "Canada" evokes the heartbreak and the hope of the Scots who came to settle that nation. I cannot imagine there will ever be a better song on that subject.

What a treat, what a treasure. Todd does it exactly the way it should be done, and he enriches the life of anyone who hears him.

A rather breathtaking recording this is, mostly spirituals traditional and modern, performed by young singers who sound much older than their years and set to tasteful, lean, but unmistakably modern musical settings. If this doesn't move you to your toenails, you may already be dead.

In a broad sense Ollabelle's sensibility is something like what Ry Cooder's was in the 1970s, when he was reimagining and reinventing American roots music. And I say that not just because Cooder also covered "Jesus on the Mainline." If you miss that sort of approach -- I know I do -- you will love what's going on here. But then I'm sure you will love it even if all you know about Cooder is that he went to Cuba a few years ago to record some old guys.

Ollabelle is a branch of the true vine. The wine is fine as fine can be.

Don Edwards has carved out a niche for himself as a folk singer in the old-fashioned sense: he actually sings actual folk songs, in this case ones either sung or composed, recently or long ago, by Westerners, known or anonymous. His recordings are done well but sparely, typically with just one instrument (guitar or banjo) carrying the vocals. His pleasantly unadorned singing is sometimes reminiscent of Marty Robbins's.

Last of the Troubadours, a two-CD sequel to the earlier two-CD Saddle Songs, will engage any sympathetic listener from beginning to end. Edwards knows a good song, and there are no clunkers here. "Cowboy" in these songs is a literal, unironic job description, not a hip slang phrase for hard-partying Nashville star as in those irritatingly self-congratulatory songs Waylon and Willie cranked out in their heyday.

The point of view is both romantic and autumnal, no more so than in the moving traditional lament "The Campfire Has Gone Out." There are familiar titles -- "The Colorado Trail," "Night Rider's Lament" (the yodeling at the end is a lovely touch), "Barbara Allen," "Utah Carroll" -- along with striking variants of "Diamond Joe" and "The Rancher Feeds Us All" (otherwise "The Farmer Feeds Us All"). He also revives worthy obscurities such as "The Mormon Cowboy" (long a favorite of mine in the classic 1920s recording by Carl Sprague), "Root Hog or Die," "I Wanted to Die in the Desert," and other sturdy frontier ballads.

I guess I would have liked a fuller string-band sound on a few of the selections if only for the sake of variety, though Norman and Nancy Blake make a welcome appearance on a couple of cuts. Still, that's not a critical issue, not when there is so much to like in Edwards's quiet, intimate campfire approach. If you like authentic cowboy tunes performed authentically by a living master, saddle up.

The Echo of Hooves represents a welcome return to June Tabor's roots in pure English and Scottish traditional music. Her singing, often mannered and aloof in her recordings of recent years, is restrained, even intimate by Tabor standards. One would never imagine her singing, like an authentic source singer, on a front porch in a rural backwater -- her classical training is always in evidence -- but even so, she inhabitants the often tragic, hundreds-of-years-old narratives in a way that never fails to persuade. Stark and impeccably executed, the arrangements never get in the way of singer, song, or story. None of the melodies are the standard ones that an experienced listener would associate with, say, such familiar ballads as "Bonnie James Campbell," "The Cruel Mother," or "Hugh Graeme." The program perfectly concludes with a moving reading of the magnificent "Sir Patrick Spens."