Jewel’s New Facets Have a Familiar Ring

Folkie singer-songwriter Jewel showed Friday night at the Greek Theatre that she’s quite capable of a-changin’ with the times, but her familiar sensitivity was always part of the show.

Wearing tight jeans and a strategically torn red T-shirt, the 28-year-old artist didn’t spend much time talking to the audience. Instead, she let her music make most of the emotional connections during the two-hour set, even treating the near-capacity crowd to two new songs written just days earlier. Jewel also mentioned the April horseback-riding accident in which she broke her collarbone and a rib, joking that she’d do some flashy dance moves instead of playing much guitar, although she actually did play it about half the time.

Songs from her current album, “This Way,” put the best-selling poet’s agile, sweet voice and plaintive lyrics into a range of musical settings, and her fine backing quintet deftly shifted from the smooth, techno-like pop of the hit “Standing Still” to the sinuous, Indian-feeling “Serve the Ego.” Yet even such grittier numbers as the blues-rocker “Everybody Needs Someone Sometime” weren’t exactly down ‘n’ dirty, but more boisterous expressions of Jewel’s basic message that people often quite desperately need people.

This emphasis on sonic diversity was reflected in the evening’s opening-act program, Soul City Cafe, which Jewel launched to help create for other young artists the kind of grass-roots support she initially received. Alongside singer-songwriter Scooter Scudieri and spoken-word artist Nafeesa Monroe, the band Edify got the warmest reception for its Pearl Jam-meets-Creed brand of melodic, aggressively emotional tunes.

Jewel flashed her social conscience with the new song “Jesus Loves You,” and she also delved into her catalog for such favorites as the torchily tormented “Foolish Games” and an extended, blues-flavored take on “Who Will Save Your Soul?”

Her mid-set solo turn offered the lighthearted, insistently romantic “Morning Song,” but it also provided the most nakedly emotional moment with a heartbreaking tune about a friend who died of cancer.

Despite the adeptly changed-up sound, the songs had a puzzling sameness at their core. As much as Jewel’s apparent naivete seemed a cloak of sorts in her younger days, now her austere sentimentality feels similarly self-protective. But by shielding listeners from her emotional center, she was only momentarily riveting rather than completely transcendent.