time* sex* love*. (Carousel Corner).

Mary Chapin Carpenter, time* sex* love* (Columbia)

"* time is the great gift, * sex is the great equalizer, * love is the great mystery." There are precious few singer/songwriters today who would dare offer as pithy a summation of the human condition, and get away with it, as Mary Chapin Carpenter. Oh, one can conjure some, like the young Michael Stipe, Dylan, or Springsteen, who have attacked the fact of being alive with bravura, anger--gusto even. But it's the mature artist who earns the right, who reflects from experiential vistas without apology. And what imbues Mary Chapin Carpenter's vision is an often brutal honesty, especially if one assumes that the "I" is she: "Don't want to need the way I need you/Don't want to feel like this/Holding back all the words but not the kiss/For the moment my heart begins to murmur/ The moment of truth arrives/And I know you'll shake your head and say good bye" ("Slave to the Beauty") -- where sex is unequal and love's mystery is a fumbling hesitancy, opportunity self-denied.

Even the inevitable pain of life's uncertainties is treated with a wry, world-weary shrug: "I'm sorry for the rain that broke the dam/That caused the flood/ I'm sorry for the pain but that's/They way it is because/Everything is so uncertain ... That's the beauty and the hurting/Of living in a maybe world" ("Maybe World"). A ...