MUSIC REVIEW
Songs Say One Thing, Actions Another
By JON CARAMANICA
Published: January 11, 2011
You can absolutely judge a band by its covers, a cursory examination of the classics played on Monday night by the young country duo Steel Magnolia showed. There was “After the Fire Is Gone,” the Loretta Lynn-Conway Twitty lament; the feisty Stevie Nicks scold “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around”; and “Jackson,” popularized by Johnny and June Carter Cash, which masks deep resentment beneath pep and winks.
Chad Batka for The New York Times
Steel Magnolia The country duo, made up of Meghan Linsey and Joshua Scott Jones, performed at the Bowery Ballroom on Monday night. They won the second season of the CMT reality show “Can You Duet.”
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Chad Batka for The New York Times
Ms. Linsey and Mr. Jones. Their debut album, “Steel Magnolia,” was released this week.
So this is love, then, or at least its underbelly. Steel Magnolia is made up of Meghan Linsey and Joshua Scott Jones, a couple both musical and romantic. And during this Bowery Ballroom concert in celebration of their self-titled debut album (on Big Machine), which was released this week, they made clear how tough it is to maintain a well-oiled duo.
Not professionally — the singing was mostly fine, sometimes more than that. But this show, which had maybe half the energy of the duo’s charming album, was more a referendum on whether love can survive fame and its mandates.
Steel Magnolia was the winner of the second season of the CMT reality show “Can You Duet.” Ms. Linsey and Mr. Jones were a couple, both kinds, before trying out for the show. But their heat is drawn less from their time as reality-TV victors than from their combustibility as young lovers.
The range of emotion was on display during this sparsely attended show (not a good relationship portent, as these things go). During “Ooh La La,” the first song, Mr. Jones scooted over to Ms. Linsey’s microphone to coo a bit, while she looked sullen, a pose she maintained for much of the night. During “Eggs Over Easy,” he appeared desperate to cuddle her, to cheer her up. Finally, on the smoky single“Just by Being You (Halo and Wings),” she began to edge her way toward him, but maybe she just wanted to make sure he heard her belting.
Ms. Linsey has a firm, brassy voice, with shades of Southern soul and gospel. Mr. Jones’s is crisper, at times with the linear thrust of Daryl Hall. For most of the night, the volume on her microphone appeared to be lower than his, or maybe she was restraining her ample voice so as not to maul his, or both. Match that with a display that included what appeared to be genuine lack of interest and, sometimes, ire, and the couple’s more tender songs, like “Last Night Again,” could feel hollow.
“Do you get along when you’re working on the music thing?” Mr. Jones had asked the veteran mother-daughter duo the Judds during a mentoring session on “Can You Duet.” “Because we don’t at all.” (While we’re on the subject, pour a little liquor for the more gifted but less charismatic first-season winners, Caitlin & Will, paired as part of the TV show’s cruel conceit of sometimes splitting established duos to form new ones, who disbanded after releasing only a tepid EP.)
But there’s hope. Mr. Jones said he wrote “Without You” while Ms. Linsey was mad at him, and they finished it together. On it they traded lines, picking up the melody easily from each other, and at the end, sang into one microphone, eyes fixed on each other, a blatant gimmick that transcended itself. Better were the many moments in which one hoped to catch the other’s eye, but didn’t — still looking for affirmation through it all.
To close out the encore, they performed the bruised Hank Williams number “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” a song they sang on “Can You Duet.” Finally, Ms. Linsey was unleashed, her voice roaring, while Mr. Jones got impressionistic with his electric guitar, playing scraped-up, wobbly chords that poked and prodded at the edges of Ms. Linsey’s lines. It sounded formidable, these two voices not speaking the same language.
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