Carpenter’s Folk-Rooted Songs Have Much to Communicate

If the ‘N Sync guys ever get nightmares, surely one is that they suffer some leg injury that leaves them unable to dance and totally reliant on what their songs have to say.

Talk about cold sweats.

That was Mary Chapin Carpenter’s predicament Thursday at the Greek Theatre, where she sat glued to her chair, the result of recent knee surgery.

Carpenter, however, had plenty left to communicate--at one point, after another lengthy but endearing anecdote, she joked, “I feel like I’m from the Planet Verbosia.”

In her music too, Carpenter, who enjoyed a surprising early-’90s turn as a country hit maker, has returned in her new “Time, Sex, Love” album to more of the rambling, folk-rooted narratives she favored back in the ‘80s.

That’s good and bad. Her generosity with lyrics can yield songs in which everything is spelled out, leaving little space for the listener to get involved, as is the case in some of the new album material that dominated her set.

Still, the tunes benefited from her onstage chattiness, which added spontaneity--as did inventive solos from guitarist Duke Levine--to the otherwise unremittingly tasteful performance her six-piece band delivered.

Steve Earle & the Dukes, reviewed at length recently, opened with a generous 13-song set that ran a full hour. He provided an object lesson in fully dimensional songs that dig to the heart of love lost, hope abandoned and faith redeemed through honest soul-searching refreshingly free of sentimentality or self-pity.