PROVIDENCE — At Jewel’s last stop here, in 2003, the show was planned as a full-band night, but had to be changed to a solo acoustic show after the sudden death of her bass player. Last night’s show at the Providence Performing Arts Center was solo from the get-go, and once again the acoustic format brought out her strengths.

Most important among those is one of the strongest voices in pop music. From the opening, an a cappella rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” to the rapid-fire yodeling of the final encore, Jewel’s voice was in fine shape and easily swooped over, under and through melodies and hit the high hard ones at the end of songs such as “Good Day” and “Foolish Games.” She said from the stage that she sang “better to a crowd” than in a recording studio, and she’s right: There was much more in the way of dimension and dynamics.

Her guitar playing is also at least serviceable. Sometimes last night it was better than that, on songs such as “Near You Always,” and worked at least as well as the often-vanilla backings on her records.

As with many ’70s-inspired singer-songwriters, some of the songs meandered, and don’t grab an inexperienced listener. But a country-inspired sequence in the middle of the show provided a refreshing hit of song structure, as did the funny polka “Cold Song.”

Her penchant for forgetting lyrics also came into play, as “New Wild West” went through several false starts as she asked for help with the words from the crowd, and finally asked a stagehand to hold the lyrics within reading distance. It’s happened so often now that it’s become more of an affable trademark than an irritation.

In the middle of the show, Jewel broke into the title song from her latest album, this year’s Goodbye Alice in Wonderland. It’s basically an explanation by the earnest singer-songwriter for her previous record, the dance-pop experiment 0304, which many fans and critics thought a sellout move.

“I did not find paradise,” she sang. “It was only a reflection of my lonely mind searching for what was missing in my life.” It was an unusual moment, to say the least: utterly self-absorbed, yet at the same time compelling for its audacity.

Unfortunately, it was also about as deep as the show got. Insights and inspired poetics aren’t Jewel’s strong point; “My hands are small, I know/ But they’re not yours, they are my own” and “I’m OK with me” are pretty accurate reflections of her philosophical and literary sensibilities at work.

But when the material was catchy (including “Intuition,” from the 0304 record), Jewel had more than enough skills to put it over, including the closing hits “You Were Meant for Me” and “Save Your Soul.”

Shane Alexander opened the show. His voice was strong and his songs of loving, losing and regretting, while rather inside the box, were well-crafted if occasionally vague. The simple, direct “Front Porch Serenade” was a keeper.