Walls And Windows

Four years after celebrating the music of her native Ireland on Wandering Home, Maura O'Connell returns with a characteristically eclectic and deeply satisfying collection of songs from both sides of the Atlantic. A lesser voice covering Van Morrison's "Crazy Love" would leave us hankering for the original, but O'Connell manages to make it her own, and elsewhere she strikes gold in the song books of John Prine ("Sleepy Eyed Boy"), Eric Clapton ("I Get Lost"), and Ron Sexsmith ("Don't Ask Why"). A songwriter's hat trick ("I Wonder," "Poor Man's House," and "Long Ride Home") goes to Patty Griffin, a top-tier vocalist herself whose gutsy material is proving increasingly popular in O'Connell's adopted hometown of Nashville. Throughout, Ray Kennedy's production is clean and energetic, with sections of full-on rock and twang balanced by fine acoustic picking and the gentle wail of uilleann pipes, but as always what lingers in memory is O'Connell's luminous voice. --Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers