What is one to make of a 27-year-old songwriter whose praises, not to mention songs, are sung by no less a folk deity than Joan Baez? Irish singer and songwriter Sinead Lohan, whose two albums have gone platinum in her native land (that's sales of over 10,000, not a million, but c'mon—it's Ireland), opened several concerts for Baez last year, since which time Baez, composer of such remarkable songs as "Diamonds and Rust," has lauded Lohan as one of the most formidable young talents in the world, even going so far as to include Lohan's composition "No Mermaid" in her own concert set. What is one to make of it?

On the evidence of Lohan's second release, also titled No Mermaid, one can make quite a lot of it. Given that Lohan toured with Baez, and that her lyrics often center around sympathetic, "personal" narratives, it's easy to peg her as yet another young neo-folkie, building a career for herself by rewriting old Joni Mitchell songs. Lohan, mercifully, is no folkie, and she'd never heard a note of Joni Mitchell until after her first album was released.

Judging from the sonic evidence of No Mermaid, while Lohan may not have been listening to Mitchell, she does seem to have absorbed the work of plenty of her fellow countrymen, including Hothouse Flowers, mid-period U2, and the Cranberries. She may also have lent an attentive ear to Bob Dylan's No Mercy and Time Out of Mind albums, both produced by Daniel Lanois and both of which rate as the only noteworthy collections of original material Dylan has released in the last decade and a half. At their best, Lanois' trademark atmospheric soundscapes, which also helped propel U2's The Joshua Tree into permanent album-of-the-decade status, have an uncanny ability to add to a song's meaning without obscuring it, and to give the listener a sweet lump of ear candy in the bargain. No Mermaid was produced by Lanois protege Malcolm Burn who, while lacking some of his mentor's subtlety, does a fine job with Lohan's songs, taking them well beyond their folk-guitar roots into varied and adventuresome sonic territory.

The album begins, of course, with "No Mermaid," a rousing, thumping declaration of empowerment that easily lives up to Baez's acclaim. Amidst a gently raucous arrangement of drums and layered guitars, Lohan's voice is assured and unpretentious; she encourages the listener to come to her, presenting her heroine's story without telegraphing its meaning: "We were swinging from the center of the ceiling/you were afraid to give in/I said I know I'll always live for this feeling/and you closed your eyes, you said 'never again'." From there the album progresses through a variety of moods, from the more quietly contemplative ("Don't I Know," "Loose Ends") to celebratory ("Whatever It Takes ...") to defiant ("Believe It If You Like"). Burn musters a range of instrumentation along the way, from skeletal beat-boxes to swirls of almost Arabian-sounding keyboards; for instance, check out the murmurous "Don't I Know," as soothing and comforting as a lullaby, even with a trip-hop snare sample.

Yet the album's most rewarding pleasures aren't the kitchen-sink production or Lohan's lyrics, which, while admirably managing to be both elliptical and matter-of-fact, contain few genuinely arresting phrases or images. No, Lohan's true strengths are her melodies, which are uncomplicated (in a good way) and nearly always memorable, and—best of all—her singing. Living in a pop music climate saturated with bad singing, from Sheryl Crow's squawking to Adam Duritz's whining to Jewel's precious, breathless cooing, it's truly a relief to encounter a young singer who approaches a melody tastefully, allowing it to insinuate itself with the listener rather than trying to belt it into the left field bleachers. It's a voice that could say great things someday, and has some pretty good things to say in the meantime.