London folkie Flo Morrissey and souly Virginia singer/producer Matthew E White discovered each other in 2015, when White spotted a review of Morrissey’s debut single on the Guardian website and was curious enough to click the link. He followed with an admiring tweet, which led to the pair covering the Lee Hazlewood song Some Velvet Morning at a Hazlewood memorial gig in London. An emboldened White then invited Morrissey to sing on one of his own songs at his studio in Richmond, Virginia. “And she said: ‘Absolutely not,’” White recalls tonight, avuncular and good humoured. Standing to his right, Morrissey protests: “I was quite busy.”
The upshot: she went to Richmond last summer, and 10 days later the pair had made a notable album, Gentlewoman, Ruby Man. Comprised of cover versions, some of them surprising (their laconic remodelling of Grease raises the bar to an impossible height for all future Barry Gibb covers), it provides the context for tonight’s show. Morrissey and White perform all but one track from it, as well as one solo song apiece, and come out the other end with a claim to being a one-night-stand Carpenters.
There’s a siblingish affinity in the waist-length dark hair they both wear, and when they give their low-key all to the songs, soft-rock magic happens. Karen and Richard Carpenter would applaud their technique: the backing band, imported from Richmond, are impeccable, and the vocal harmonies are silken. Despite a setlist that could do duty as the most self-conscious Spotify Discover Weekly playlist – a bit of Frank Ocean, a bit of obscure French miserablism (Nino Ferrer’s Looking for You), and so on – the duo offer only warmth and smiles.
White isn’t short of self-effacing chat, while Morrissey stands by (“I never know what to say in these things”), yet both singers get ample space. Key to their setup is the acknowledgment that one or the other often takes a back seat. The opening Roy Ayers number, Everybody Loves the Sunshine, is one of tonight’s few true duets; what follows, on Charlotte Gainsbourg’s Heaven Can Wait and Ocean’s Thinkin Bout You, is Morrissey taking over as White issues complementary purrs. But then Morrissey stands back as White steers Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne to ghostly waters, and simply can’t compete with his growling Grease, delivered with hands jammed in pockets, can’t-dance-won’t-dance style.
Clearly, they have divergent interests: Morrissey’s true folkie self is evident on her solo song, Pages of Gold, and White has a touch of Barry White as he “conducts” the band. Nonetheless, they blend seamlessly. Yet you get the feeling that this is a one-off – a bit of fun rather than a serious attempt to find new meanings in complex songs. Nothing wrong with that, though. Who couldn’t use some fleeting pleasure in this weather?
