John Doyle

John Doyle on guitar has risen to a level occupied by him alone. No one in Irish traditional music is a better guitarist than him right now. His chops, always assured and adroit, have now entered a rarefied zone of inspired, instinctive, in-the-moment creativity that made me gasp in awe and for breath. In my Wall Street Journal article on him this past March, I described John as one of the world's best acoustic guitarists. I now think that may be an understatement. In addition, his vocal delivery and his songwriting have never been more impressive, reaching an apogee in The Arabic, where his singing and guitar accompaniment (this is really a misnomer: his self-backing and instrumental fills and runs on guitar constituted a tour de force in and of themselves) on his own song were unforgettable.