Power Without Vulnerability

Give Trisha Yearwood credit: She is among the relatively few mainstream Nashville acts proving that it is possible to be country and commercial without also being corny and cliched.

Like virtually all the repertoire on her five albums (not counting a Christmas release), Yearwood’s early show Monday at the Crazy Horse Steak House was built on songs written to evoke believable slices of life. Not songs manufactured, like too much mainstream country fodder, to justify somebody’s pet pun, cutely obvious plot twist, sentimentalist whitewash of the family or company-line boilerplate about the virtues of small-town living.

Of course, the Georgia native’s reward for increasingly mature records has been steadily slackening sales, with SoundScan totals dropping for each release since her 1991 debut album topped 1.6 million. Still, by today’s standards, Yearwood, at 32, has achieved longevity.

Artistic freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose (or not caring much about the spoils in the first place), and the main reason to harbor reservations about Yearwood is her still-conservative approach. Those believable slices of life she chooses to sing about (Yearwood doesn’t write her own material) are a start down the right path, not a destination. They are familiar and straightforward scenarios that steer clear of mysteries, emotional extremes and uncomfortable ambiguities.

At the Crazy Horse, an at-ease, wryly quipping Yearwood was at her best when applying her clear, confident voice to songs that celebrated gumption and strength. There is a tough, steely quality in her singing that put a hopeful spin on “Everybody Knows,” the title song and upcoming single from her new album. It portrayed a woman struggling for balance after being dumped, and the trace of defiance and flinty humor Yearwood injected suggested her protagonist would be resourceful enough to find it.

Her sassy, blues-inflected delivery on “That’s What I Like About You” (not the Romantics’ pop-rock hit), coupled with a zingy band performance, made it the song not just of a woman in love, but of a confident, centered woman in love. Even when Yearwood sang “love is not a matter of pride” in her apologetic ballad “Down on My Knees,” her forceful quality conveyed the strength it takes to apologize, more than any abject need to do it.

It’s no news that ‘90s Nashville takes most of its cues from ‘70s L.A. country-rock, and Yearwood, with that clean, powerful voice, takes some of hers from Linda Ronstadt. By listening to Ronstadt, Yearwood seems to have learned some of what not to do: While her voice was authoritative, she knew the value of restraint. She never turned it into a truncheon that bashed a song into submission, as Ronstadt has been wont to do.

On the other hand, Yearwood gave no evidence that she is capable of the torn-up devastation Ronstadt captured in “Long, Long Time” or, more recently, “Sandman’s Coming” from Randy Newman’s “Faust.”

Her 55-minute, 13-song set (you don’t have to be from small-town Georgia to know that is several peaches short of a bushel) left out ballads that might have given her a chance to display the vulnerability needed to balance the strength that comes to her naturally. But it’s questionable whether she is capable of opening herself in that way. A closing rendition of “Over the Rainbow” from “The Wizard of Oz” came off more like a muscular statement of ambition than a poignant, introspective moment of yearning for what may be painfully out of reach.

Yearwood’s taste and control are commendable, but in art, daring wins the day. Her instincts are good, but her artistry needs to be radicalized.