Restore and sparsebundle issues

I've got a double whammy. My external hard drive for backup died in late November and while I was waiting for a new power supply connector my iTunes music library 'went missing' in early January. And to add to the weirdness, only part of the library disappeared, about 60% is still there andplaylists, play counts etc are all gone.

The external drive is working again and I had hoped to restore from its last backup of 25 November using Time Machine. Under my username there is nothing but a "sparsebundle". Everything else on the Mac is fine so I'm loathe to restore the the entire sparsebundle. Is there some way to just choose the music folder?

Alternatively, is there a reliable way to restore to my iTunes library from my iPod which still contains the full music collection.

Thanks.