Cheryl Wheeler “Driving Home”<i> Philo</i>

A lot of songwriters think their job is over once they have evoked an emotion and placed it in some sort of identifiable situation, however hackneyed (some hits even dispense with the situation). Cheryl Wheeler puts that sort of writing to shame. She knows that emotions usually are mixed, that situations are fluid and that life is too complex to fit into songwriting formulas. Those who can suggest such complexities within the enforced limits of a three- or four-minute song have a real gift, and this New Englander, whose music is a mix of folk, country and soft rock, is one of them. Even more so than Mary-Chapin Carpenter (who sings harmony on one track here), the overlooked Wheeler has a distinctive way of seeing that allows her to detail settings and conjure lives in a way all her own.

That knack makes possible such songs as “Frequently Wrong but Never in Doubt,” a character study that is utterly singular. In it, Wheeler contemplates a friend of her family whom she really doesn’t like, whom she would normally be inclined to mock or dismiss, except that, well, he is almost kin and claims a legitimate share of her own characteristic tenderness.

“Driving Home” is the fourth album by Wheeler, whose biggest successes have come as a writer scoring hit covers by Dan Seals (“Addicted”) and Suzy Bogguss (“Aces”). But she is a wonderful singer in her own right, a fervent, unreserved emoter who often trembles with feeling yet never sounds affected. Wheeler nearly always sounds as if she is caught up in swells of emotion, and only a hard-hearted listener could resist being similarly taken.

She sings in a clear, fluid voice that has some Joni Mitchell in it, albeit with fewer idiosyncrasies. Producer Jonathan Edwards, an old folkie himself, surrounds her with appropriately understated arrangements that are polished but not slick.

The things that get Wheeler’s emotions churning and attract her observing eye can be as simple as a drive through the countryside on a sunny day (“Driving Home”) or the change of seasons. In fact, she is as vivid a writer of pastoral pop as you could wish to find. In “Spring,” a lilting landscape painting, the Earth’s renewal brings new hope for a troubled relationship. “When Fall Comes to New England” is a gently glowing anthem that captures the pure, riveting wonder of natural beauty and its effect on our senses and hearts.

This miniaturist also can look at the big picture. She has written before with empathy for old people, and in “75 Summers” she traces a parent’s life from cradle to rocking chair, ending with unanswerable questions about what a lifetime means and what wisdom a person can expect to possess after 75 years. “Orbiting Jupiter,” written with Janis Ian, takes on a chill, austere tone as Wheeler leaves behind all the loving particulars of her earthbound portraiture and seeks a mystical self-abnegation amid the vast, lonely expanse of space.

Wonderfully humorous in concert, Wheeler sticks mainly to the fervent stuff on her recordings. The lone exception here, “Don’t Forget the Guns,” uses pointed silliness, rather than self-righteousness, to lampoon the gun culture, which makes it far more appealing than your average fist-waving broadside.

Fans of such singer-songwriters as Carpenter, Rosanne Cash and Shawn Colvin would not go wrong in dialing another C, for Cheryl.