Karen Ponzio Photos
Shana Falana
“This is our best show so far. You’re making our dreams come true,” said the New York State-based Shana Falana, who headlined last night’s Manic Monday show at Cafe Nine. She helped create a dreamy atmosphere on a triple bill along with local favorite Lys Guillorn and new-to-the-local-scene band Tall Trees.
“This is only our second or third show, I think,” said Joe Russo, Tall Trees’ guitarist and vocalist, who along with Marthe Ryerson on vocals, violin and keyboard and Wes Cross on drums set the tone for the evening. Their sweet and airy harmonies, punctuated by a post punk-pop rock vibe, could have been the soundtrack to a dream, or maybe even a spring carnival. Taking the mood from ominous (“you should have come with a warning,” they sang) to lighter and more lively (“I wanna take you to the beach”) — from their first single, “Prayers for Surf Boy” — the trio evoked visions of both romance and regret and were received repeatedly with loud cheers and applause from the friendly and receptive audience.
Coming to the stage next, accompanied by electric guitar and pedalboard only, Lys Guillorn chose eight songs from her repertoire and re-created and reimagined them to an audience that was often nearly completely hushed as their lyrics were made more bare and emboldened. Guillorn said she wasn’t feeling talkative, though she chatted briefly in between songs about her “weird” times at college — “but I took a lot of philosophy classes so that was cool,” she added — and her devotion to the Jack Kerouac poster that remained behind the Cafe Nine bar even through the venue’s remodeling years ago. Songs such as “Boylesque,” “Tinctoria” — “this song is about dyeing” she told the audience, “d‑y-e” — and “How to Make a Mountain,” typically played on banjo by Guillorn, became renewed versions of themselves and cemented Guillorn as the go-to in the New Haven music scene as both a constant and a constant innovator. The audience received the set joyously.
The final act of the evening, Shana Falana, came to the stage along with drummer Michael Amari and ended the night with a full auditory and visual experience. With the majority of the house lights turned off, the stage was lit with film projections on a screen behind the band as well as an occasional strobe light firing off into the product of a fog machine behind Falana. The mood switched from light as air and ambient to an outright onslaught of guitar and percussion as the duo tore through a set of both old and new songs, some from their soon-to-be-released album, Darkest Light.
Falana exuded intensity in joy and joyous expression throughout the set, interacting with the audience repeatedly, especially to thank them. She told crowd members they were “incredible” after the final song, a much slower and sweeter tune that she said would be the first song off their new record and was “completely different’ for them. Each and every song was received with rousing applause as the vibe in the room continued to rise high.
She even asked for the audience’s input after playing the song “Who We Are.” which was accompanied by a film she said she had put together herself, comprised of cable TV news clips as well as stills of flowers and outer space. Before playing the song “Everyone is Going to Be Okay,” she asked the audience to come up to her after the show and let her know if the two songs “go together.”
I spoke to her afterward, when she mentioned that she was concerned the audience might think she was trying to be “sarcastic” when she was trying to be hopeful. She added that she didn’t usually talk that much during a set, but felt “so welcomed” by the Cafe Nine audience that she “just had to ask them.” I told her my take was that the first song may have seemed more ominous but that the second left me definitively optimistic. We both agreed that we would all be okay.