John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey at Café Carlyle Why does the title of John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey's brilliant new show, "This Must Be the Place?" (that's the Talking Heads song with new punctuation), end with a question mark? That song, ingeniously wound around the Beatles" "Two of Us," led off this married couple's opening-night program at the Café Carlyle on Wednesday evening. John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey Their new show, "This Must Be the Place?," opened Wednesday at Café Carlyle. The question mark suggests that the narrator of "This Must Be the Place," "an animal looking for a home," isn't certain of its location. The central couple of the Beatles song are on their way home, but haven't arrived. How real is the concept of "home sweet home" as a refuge from the storms of the world? And at what point does a safe harbor become a prison from which you long to escape? And even if you flee the nest, what of value do you leave behind? These questions are addressed elliptically in a program that deconstructs the concept of home with an acute awareness that its solidity is illusory. Or, as the James Taylor song "Enough to Be on Your Way," urges: Home, build it behind your eyes Carry it in your heart. In a life of unceasing travel, it implies, home is something you have to invent yourself and take along with you. Mr. Taylor's ballad was beautifully performed by Ms. Molaskey, a singer whose radar yields infallible insight into a song's emotional crosscurrents. Her renditions of Joni Mitchell's "Marcie" and Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne's "Free Falling" gave these stories of fractured relationships a piercing immediacy. As always, Mr. Pizzarelli and Ms. Molaskey play a sophisticated game of push me, pull you, in which Ms. Molaskey is a kind of empathetic therapist with a playful imagination, and Mr. Pizzarelli, in both his guitar playing and singing, is an irrepressible optimist. In this show their roles are less divided than usual. Mr. Pizzarelli crooned "No More," the Stephen Sondheim plea from "Into the Woods," which took on extra resonance after Hurricane Sandy. In particular, the words "Where are we to go?," sung gently and wistfully, echoed in my mind. Mr. Pizzarelli and his band (Larry Fuller on piano, Tony Tedesco on drums, and Mr. Pizzarelli's younger brother, Martin Pizzarelli, on bass) played their customary mixture of breezy, guitar-based jazz and pop with the usual happy-making exuberance. "Avalon" and the Lionel Hampton theme song "Flyin" Home" (with lyrics by Ms. Molaskey) surged with joy and excitement. The evening ended with Ms. Molaskey's unamplified rendition of Ricky Ian Gordon and Tina Landau's "Finding Home," from the 1997 Off Broadway show "Dream True." The song encapsulated everything that had come before and ended with a sigh of affirmation: Trusting home if you travel far and wide Carrying home deep inside. John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey perform through Nov. 24 at the Café Carlyle, 35 East 76th Street, Manhattan; (212) 744-1600.