Brian Slattery Photos
Allie Burnet.
Midway through her set with her band, the Proven Winners, Allie Burnet asked to do one song by herself. In a break from her original material, she launched into a cover of Sinéad O’Connor’s “Black Boys on Mopeds,” a 1990 song about police brutality that has aged all too well.
To give the song a final twist, Burnet changed one line. In 1990, O’Connor sang, “These are dangerous days / to say what you feel is to dig your own grave.” Burnet altered the second half of that line: “To be who you are is to stand in your grave.”
It was an edit that O’Connor — a staunch public ally of the LGBTQ+ community from the 1980s until her death in 2023 — would almost surely have appreciated. So too did the audience that packed Cafe Nine Sunday evening to see Burnet and the Proven Winners, headlining a three-band bill of New Haven stalwarts and newcomers who each created a sense of strength and community against adversity.
Sam Carlson of the Tines began the night with a short set of originals, remarking early on that “it’s so quiet, it’s delightful.” Sometimes Cafe Nine can be a place where people come mostly to talk with their neighbors. Not this Sunday. Carlson appreciated the focus, though also noted that “there’s going to be a point where I rely on you to talk amongst yourselves, so think about what you want to say to your neighbors about 20 minutes from now.”
Carlson’s set contained material he usually performs and records with a full band. Playing his songs solo with just an acoustic guitar gave the clever and heartfelt lyrics an extra chance to come to the fore. By the audience’s silence, it seemed those incisive words and catchy melodies were what they needed. Carlson also used his set to invite Daniel Onorato of Old Milk Mooney to the stage to perform one of his songs, “Lack.” It was about how, with your people around you, “there’s nothing you can lack,” a point brought home by Carlson and a singer introduced as Carissa crowding close to the mic to sing harmonies.
Calendula — the name is taken from a species of daisy — was up next with what singer and guitarist Abbie Golec described as the band’s first live performance ever with a full lineup. The band, featuring Conor Ryan on drums, Dylan Cochrane on bass, and Nick Fitch on guitar, floated through a set of originals centered organically around Golec’s voice and guitar; Ryan provided propulsion while Fitch and Cochrane proved sinuous, sympathetic players. Golec’s fingerpicking style and direct vocals were the anchor for it all.
While the band’s overall sound was firmly planted in indie rock, at several moments Golec seemed to reach farther back and even across continents. She dipped into traditions farther south and far away, from American blues to the western Sahara, of people singing over intricate guitars, the rhythmic complexity of the music paired with big emotions that, in the end, offered a keen sense of dreamy solace.
Allie Burnet and the Proven Winners — Burnet on vocals and guitar, Annalisa Boerner on viola, Torrey Proto on bass, and Jay Bates on drums — finished the night with a set of originals that was shambolic and sweet, filled with wry humor and earnest, sometimes heartbreaking emotion. Proto and Bates built the foundation for the sound while Boerner swooped in and out. Burnet delivered her vocals sometimes with a knowing wink, sometimes with disarming sincerity, sometimes switching it up line by line. There was never any doubt in the honesty of the performance, even as Burnet was also the sort of musician who would nonchalantly engage in soloing with Boerner back to back and leaning into each other.
“You will find yourself with nothing in your pockets / you will call it space to grow,” Burnet sang. “You will find yourself out past the asteroid belt / You will be safely at home.”
The sense of fragile safety that had started with Carlson’s first song peaked with the performance of “You’re Okay,” a song written toward the end of the pandemic with deceptively simple lyrics made devastating in the delivery.
“Hey, you’re okay / just relax; let it pass / hey; its okay / you got time; take your time,” Burnet sang. “And hey, its okay / scream in dreams / kick and shout.”
As the band moved through the song, a slow wave seemed to wash over the room. People nodded their heads. Some sang along quietly. A few just watched, a little misty-eyed. One man at the bar put his hand over his heart.
“All we ask is that you take a sticker,” Burnet said at the end of the set, and “that you pay it forward, not back.”