POP MUSIC REVIEW : Good by Any Definition : Carpenter Puts Lots of Rock in Country--or Is It the Other Way Around?

The great thing lately about country music fans is you can tell them just about anything is country and they’ll believe it. From the mannered dinner music of Lyle Lovett to the whacked-out border romps of the Texas Tornados to the rockin’ grunge of the Kentucky Headhunters--just stick it in boots, and the country audience opens the door and invites it to stay.

In that respect, country seems to be far more open lately than the rock world. In rock, a Richard Thompson can be praised for more than two decades by critics and fellow musicians and still not be able to get so much as a sneeze on the radio; Cajun singer Jo-el Sonnier, on the other hand, only had to add a hint of twang to Thompson’s “Tear Stained Letter” for it to become a Top 10 country hit.

Singer-songwriter Mary-Chapin Carpenter’s music rocks more than it moseys, yet it is the country chart where she has found a home, and the Crazy Horse Steak House where she played Monday night. Rock’s loss is very clearly country’s gain.

Carpenter’s melodic bent recalls the early Carly Simon, without the excess attitude. Then, she and her quartet drew their musical cues Monday from vintage ‘60s rock (with chiming Rickenbacker 12-strings no less) and Bruce Springsteen’s distillations of that era more than from anything in spurs.

But in two respects Carpenter can very much qualify as a country artist. First, her singing has a personality all its own, with plenty of the requisite yearning quality a country ballad needs. Second, she supplies that voice with some miraculous songs, with an eye for the telling details of life.

Like a Richard Ford story, her song “When She’s Gone”--part of Monday’s set--can trace the indifference and ennui of a dead love, while hinting at its buried ache:

And the kitchen table finds you silent

If you had a thought now you can’t find it

You take a long drag on your smoke

And taste your coffee growing cold

She didn’t beg and you didn’t plead

She knew exactly how to leave

The way she knew when you kissed her

When she’s gone you won’t miss her. Between that song and the softly sad “Something of a Dreamer,” Carpenter noted, “I’ve got the reputation it seems for mostly playing sad songs. I don’t know where it comes from, but here’s another one.”

Her 19-song set wasn’t ballad-heavy--indeed, much of the music seemed as festive as her baggy polka-dot pantsuit. But when she did take a more serious turn, one certainly noticed. She has a way with a lyric where she can take a simple article of clothing, as in “This Shirt,” and weave a life of small, profound joys and losses around it.

One of her more evocative songs was “Halley Comes to Jackson,” the tale of a father pointing out Halley’s comet to his baby daughter in the night sky of 1910. The number featured keyboardist Jon Carroll on what Carpenter called “the stomach Steinway,” otherwise known as an accordion. While the lyric wasn’t as detailed as some of Carpenter’s other songs, the music gave it a sense of mood and place, with her and lead guitarist Pete Kennedy entwining delicate string lines as the accordion hummed in and out like a firefly.

Curiously, Carroll went back to his synths to mimic the Cajun accordion part to “Down at the Twist and Shout,” Carpenter’s rollicking ode to a dance hall. While not as lustrous as her current hit recording of the song--which boasted members of Beausoleil--the band managed a serviceable Cajun beat.

The closest Carpenter came to a country-styled arrangement was on “How Do,” which was more a wild sendup of the genre by the time Kennedy was done sending demented speed runs skittering through the song. The only non-original in the set wasn’t a country standard, but a fairly rote version of the Supremes’ “Back in My Arms Again.”

Carpenter also offered some unreleased songs in the set. One, “He Thinks He’ll Keep Her,” is about a guy who clearly won’t, while “I Take My Chances (Every Chance I Get)” is a boisterous rocker that posits that the unlived life isn’t worth examining. When she’s warned in the lyric that she shouldn’t tempt fate, Carpenter responds cattily: “I say, fate shouldn’t tempt me.” She also offered an acerbic, expletive-spiced song about the travails of being an opening act, which was far livelier than the standard star’s lament about how tough fame is.