Because pop music so often centers on sex, it's hard to find female singers who can exude maternal calm.

Karen Peris proves a warming exception. The singer from the Pennsylvania folk-pop group the Innocence Mission has made a career out of cooing songs of succor. Her fluttering soprano brims with acceptance and wonder, even when it's carrying a lyric of woe.

It's nearly typecasting, then, for Peris and her longstanding group finally to release an album of lullabies.

"Now the Day Is Over" features songs we all know. And Peris sings them with both a wink for their familiarity and an awe for there being tunes so fine the culture won't let them go.

Some of music's most pervasive touchstones turn up here, including "Over the Rainbow," "Edelweiss," "Moon River" and "What a Wonderful World," along with others not quite so inescapable.

The idea of hearing one more version of songs so perennial could easily elicit groans - especially if, say, Rod Stewart got his hands on them. But Peris' voice makes even the most wizened warhorses fresh.

There's an incandescent beauty to her voice, a pristine quality that just skirts preciousness. While Peris has given more nuanced performances in the past - evoking her vulnerability and fragility - on this album a tone of nurture trumps all.

In "Over the Rainbow," Peris holds the song's hope so high it nearly erases the sadness that fired it. In "Moon River," she captures a kind of romance that's sweetly chaste, while "Edelweiss" has no darker side to mine.

Peris' take on "What a Wonderful World" - best known from the Louis Armstrong version - can be read two ways. Her voice trembles with a questioning tone that acknowledges how far reality can fall from the bliss the title proclaims. But her performance still communicates a loving humility.

All together, it's so reassuring, it paints Peris as the folk-pop Julie Andrews.

Jim Farber NY DAILY NEWS  FEB. 2005