Joycean note isn't casual or contrived. Bloom took his name from the long-suffering Leopold Bloom, the hero of Joyce's Ulysses, and he's also the inheritor of a particularly Irish mix of mysticism and moonshine, a carousing spirituality that marks musicians as distinct as Van Morrison and U2.

Bloom's first name, Luka, from Suzanne Vega's song about domestic brutality, targets the folk vanguard (Vega, Tracy Chapman, Michelle Shocked) of which he aims to be a part. The singer and acoustic guitarist – a brother of the Irish folksinger Christy Moore – arrived in the United States two years ago, gathered a reputation for his electrifying live shows, sang backup on the Indigo Girls' "Closer to Fine" and honed his own brand of contemporary Celtic soul.

As much Leonard Cohen as Woody Guthrie, however, Bloom is a decidedly artful musician. A literary lyricist – "Nighthawks swagger in front of me/Sirens punctuate your symphony" – he draws his material less from the overt politics and proletarian grit of much traditional folk than from states of lovers' ecstasy and private revelation. "Gone to Pablo" captures his narrative gift most subtly; commemorating the love suicide of Picasso's second wife, the song paints death sadly but elegantly, with an almost pre-Raphaelite beauty.

Backed mainly by smoky, minimal percussion and his own deft guitar, Bloom's singing is distinctive for its clarity and conviction. Not one of folk's eccentric voices, he's a more tender deliverer; a touch of rough brogue coarsens – and personalizes – his bell-like style. It's a voice sutied to love songs, and fittingly, the best works on Riverside are ballads. On "This Is for Life," a tale of lovers separated by English prison bars, Bloom outright keens the chorus, his longing achieving a haunting, erotic strain.

There are shortcomings to Riverside. Some of the blarney humor of "An Irishman in Chinatown" is coy; the lyrics of "The One" verge on both the portentous and the trite. But Bloom's failings are lapses of an overheated ambition, and, in these days of lazy radio formula, trying too hard is a forgivable offense.

Celebrating warm flesh and spiritual fire, Riverside is a dazzling entrance. Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, Jesse Winchester's first album and Robbie Robertson's glorious ballads delimit the ground Bloom examines. It's a bra