POP MUSIC REVIEW : Griffith, McMurtry at Wadsworth

“She’s like the Donna Reed of country music,” said one fan at Nanci Griffith’s concert Thursday at the Wadsworth Theater, marveling over the Texas-bred singer’s infectious smile and indefatigable sweetness. That may be stretching it, but think maybe of brainy Suzanne Vega--whose wispy voice Griffith’s own resembles--possessed by the sentimental spirit of Donna.

While the Age of Irony has permeated even the neo-folkie movement, Griffith is someone who still projects old-style earnestness, and who saves most of the humor for the between-song storytelling and not as a method to distance herself from her own emotions. She’s a little too eccentric to be a proper easy-listening artist, and too traditionally sedate--some might say precious--to be artsy, but her folksy and occasionally country-ish music does have a following, evidenced by the Wadsworth’s near-capacity turnout.

Thursday all that sincerity came off as charming, disarming and entertainingly edgeless. Griffith can’t be accused of skirting reality to achieve her sweetness (songs like the new “Drive-In Movies and Dashboard Lights,” about the fate of a former “back-seat queen,” have plenty of poignancy), but what you carry away, more than her lyrical observations, is the way she’ll jump up in the air to end a song, or the helplessly-in-love-with-her-audience Donna smile, or just the lingering sweetness.

Opening act James McMurtry’s folk-rock anachronisms differ: He doesn’t budge on stage, has unfashionably parted frizzy hair, sings in a disaffected monotone and indulges heavily in what he called “the serious songwriter thing.” Catching him at a coffeehouse, you might be transfixed by his promising songs, but at the larger Wadsworth, his lack of passion was catching. If Griffith is a nice antidote for 1989, offering real kindness and gentleness for what is actually a less K&G; era, McMurtry is probably 15 years too late to impact with his just-the-facts drawl.