" I used to be a folksinger, now I’m a recovering folksinger, " announced Steve Early on hitting the FleetBoston Pavilion stage last Saturday. Neither Earle nor his touring partner Mary Chapin Carpenter fits into any tidy categories these days; but if folk music is supposed to be true and unflinching, that tag suits them as well as any.

Although his band the Dukes were billed on the marquee, Earle wound up playing a solo acoustic set. And the stripped-down setting made tunes like " Copperhead Road " and the death-row ballad " Over Yonder " sound like ghost stories handed down over centuries, even though Earle wrote them both. With a beard to hide his facial expressions, Earle can’t help seeming more than a little intense: when he covered the Dylan-associated " Baby Let Me Follow You Down, " he sounded more like a stalker than a suitor. Most of his set was devoted to outlaw ballads, many of which he’s lived out. " South Nashville Blues " was one of the last songs he wrote before going to jail and one of the first he recorded after cleaning up, but he doesn’t seem especially distant from the song when he does it now. There’s no judgment passed, just a junkie’s desperation served uncut.

When Mary Chapin Carpenter last hit town, two years ago, she introduced a borderline-novelty tune, " It Works, " about love between the mismatched. That song is notably missing from the current Time*Sex*Love (Sony), which is largely about what happens when it doesn’t work. The disc’s two main themes — middle-aged reckoning and sexual obsession — are common enough in pop music, but you hardly ever hear them on the same album or from the same singer.

She played more than half the 73-minute album during Saturday’s show, and that left room for only the hit singles from her back catalogue (most of the biggies — " He Thinks He’ll Keep Her, " " Shut Up & Kiss Me " — were saved for the encores). The new songs had less of the clever wordplay and catchy hooks that put her on the charts but more of the depth that makes her albums hold up. Romantically themed numbers like " Whenever You’re Ready " worked best, but the stabs at yuppiedom in " The Long Way Home " evinced a venom she’s seldom aired before. Along with the great former Fairport Convention drummer Dave Mattacks, her outfit now includes two Boston-bred guitarists, Duke Levine and Kevin Barry (both former members of Dennis Brennan’s band), who traded off on flashy but lyrical solos.

Carpenter’s stage patter can sound disarmingly personal, but she’s a cannier performer than it first appears. After playing " Swept Away, " the saddest and prettiest of the new songs, she confided that it was written after she encountered an old flame in an airport. " I think the real problem was that he couldn’t give me what I really wanted, " she noted — and with that the band slammed into " Passionate Kisses, " the Lucinda Williams cover that Carpenter hit with. She wasn’t about to let a personal revelation stand in the way of a good segue.