Fetching melodies save Carpenter's latest

Mary Chapin Carpenter, "The Age of Miracles" (Zoe/Rounder)This music is more dangerous than it sounds. With its shameless sentimentality, pep talks for boomers and references to rain (in five songs), "The Age of Miracles" could have devolved into a painful parade of platitudes made more mushy by the soft-focus musical arrangements.Ah, but Mary Chapin Carpenter long ago mastered her craft. On "Miracles" she pulls off a small one, flirting with greeting-card territory but instead delivering a set of songs that are pretty and often pretty terrific.Carpenter couples her fetching melodies with lyrics that artfully blend the specific and universal. When she says the light is changing, she means sunset. She sings of Sancerre and the Hudson River and ropes hanging from trees in the South, adding richness to her themes about the joy of the journey, the virtue of resilience and the need to dream. Especially moving are narratives about Ernest Hemingway's first wife and the activist Chen Guang.Yes, there's too much rain and wind, but Carpenter more than compensates when she quotes Tom Petty and rhymes "star" with "yar." And her husky alto remains a wonder of warmth.Check this out: The singer who had a hit with "He Thinks He'll Keep Her" takes another look at the challenges of marriage. On "I Put My Ring Back On," she thinks she'll keep him.