Evoking in dead-on detail life's quiet epiphanies and small cataclysms, Bill Morrissey is a true naturalist storyteller – and one of the best songwriters we have. With any justice, Inside's dozen harrowingly lovely vignettes should finally bring him notice beyond his native New Hampshire and his cult. Ripe successor to Bill Morrissey, North and Standing Eight, the singer-guitarist's fourth album recalls Tim Hardin, Kris Kristofferson and John Prine at their best; this is classic folk music, graced with an astonishingly subtle simplicity.

Gifted with a voice as weathered as the bleak north-country landscapes he so clearheadedly reveres, Morrissey, now forty, comes on as the very soul of experience. And on Inside, with violinist Johnny Cunningham and organist Ron Levy as his secret weapons, he's found perfect accompanists; alongside guest star Suzanne Vega, who provides delicate backing vocals on the title track, his musicians suit him ideally. The beauty, however, is ultimately not the singer's but the songs' – melodically sound, Morrissey's tunes easily bear the weight of hard-gained wisdom.

Whimsy ("Rite of Spring"), unsentimental romance ("Inside") and pathos ("Coughing up blood in a Motel 6/Thinking this time it's for real" from "Everybody Warned Me") form part of the singer's worldview, yet it's on the triumphantly eerie "Man From Out of Town" that Morrissey excels. "The house burned down on a rainy night/And they never did find out why/I just stood alone beneath the silver maple/Trying to keep my cigarettes dry./Waiting for the fireman/I couldn't save a thing/And deep inside my home, above the roar of the flame/I swore I heard my telephone ring" are lines worthy of Raymond Carver and his lapidary short stories – they resound with real poetry. The song is one of Inside's gems, its narrative power as personal as a diary entry, its music memorably spare. Another highlight, boosted by John Jenning's Claptonesque guitar, is "Robert Johnson," a tribute to the haunted bluesman, and the deftly rocking "Sister Jo" also hits hard, but it's telling that "Hang Me, Oh Hang Me" is the work whose intensity most closely rivals "Man From Out of Town." A duet with Morrissey's soul brother Greg Brown, "Hang Me" is a traditional folk piece lent fierce new dignity. And it confirms Morrissey's place in that noble lineage that reaches back to Hank Williams and Woody Guthrie – the troubadour as truth teller, conveying wisdom with absolute economy and focused fire. (RS 624)

PAUL EVANS