Mary Chapin Carpenter seems to have been in a reflective mood in recent years. In 2014, she brought out the album Songs from the Movie, in which she re-recorded ten numbers from her back catalog, and 2018 sees the release of Sometimes Just the Sky, where she takes another look at 12 tunes from her songbook, with one original added for good measure. Songs from the Movie found Carpenter reimagining her music on a grand scale, accompanied by a 63-piece orchestra and a choir of 15 voices.
Sometimes Just the Sky takes the opposite approach; for these sessions, Carpenter and producer Ethan Johns stripped these songs down into simpler form, with the singer primarily accompanied by guitarist Duke Levine and bassist Dave Bronze. (Johns' band the Black Eyed Dogs also pop up on several tracks.) In recent years, with Carpenter less concerned with country radio that no longer has a place for her, she's been digging deeper into the contemporary folk influences that marked her earliest work, and Sometimes Just the Sky is .....
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