Jack Hardy - Omens (2000)

The most obscure artist to ever receive a 10-CD box set, Jack Hardy's status as a folk mentor and icon derives from his monthly songwriter workshops in New York and his prolific, hyper-literary output. For his first new release since 1997's Celtic-flavored The Passing, Hardy turns his attention to nonchalant, Americana-ready folk rock and a high-brow library full of poetic images. "I ought to know great literature by heart," Hardy sings on the opening track, but his reading comprehension is hardly wanting. Hardy's dense, mysterious conjurings of Irish mythology won't be to every listener's taste, though his love songs, with fragrant lines like "the willow weeps although unheard" and "'round this old house the wind it whines / with a knocking keeping time," are as vivid and intense as any being written today. --Roy Kasten