Mary Chapin Carpenter has made smart, edgy country, gently gorgeous pop-rock, and tepid stuff that combines the two while dulling the impact of each. Unfortunately, Carpenter's new A Place in the World does just that, and most of the album falls in the mushy commercial middle ground to which she's too often susceptible. With simple, understated production, "What If We Went To Italy" might have resonated emotionally; instead, it's mired in strings and accordions. The album's other soft ballads—"Ideas Are Like Stars," "Sudden Gift of Fate" and the title track—are pretty enough, but blandly rendered. A Place in the World is as frustrating as fundamentally mild music gets: It's rarely bad, and songs like "That's Real" are genuinely pleasant, but Carpenter has done much better when her sights are set on something more ambitious than a desire to move a lot of units in time for the holidays.