Little Lion Collective
Vinyl pop-up and wine club
Possible Futures
New Haven
Oct. 18 (Future dates: Nov. 8, 15 and Dec. 13, 20)
From Adele to Paramore, by way of D’Angelo: Not only is the journey possible; with wine, cocktails, and friends old and new, it might just be the chillest way to close out a Saturday in autumn.
Pop-up vinyl bar Little Lion Collective has started putting its spin on Edgewood community bookspace Possible Futures’ weekends this season, offering music and cocktails twice a month as part of a residency the collective is doing in the space.
When I got to the bookstore Saturday evening, Little Lion Collective’s wine club, which accompanies the vinyl pop-up on third Saturdays, was in full swing. Collective founder Cara Santino guided the club through four wines paired with chocolate, nuts, cheese, and grapes.
Here are the records we listened to:
7 p.m. – Mitski, Puberty 2.
“Tell your baby that I’m your baby,” Mitski crooned as I settled in. The wine club was discussing tannins and body.
A group of three friends sat on a couch near the front of the space, decompressing and catching up. The night was “exactly what I needed,” said Therese Cordero. “Self-care with friends.” Esther Kang agreed, saying she loves music. Kerrie said she was particularly a fan of Mitski, so I asked where Puberty 2 ranked on her list of Mitski albums.
Probably #1, she replied, noting its emotionally charged nature. I sipped my “Dream Girl in Shibuya,” a crisp cocktail of Tsuru-Ume Yuzu Sake, club soda, and lime, and mused on my own emotionally charged nature.
Santino told me they had started the night with Adele’s 25 and Alicia Keys’ The Diary of Alicia Keys. Going “Post-2000s” was a step outside Santino’s typical picks; they usually stick to ‘90s, ‘80s, ‘70s, even ‘60s.
7:30 p.m. – D’Angelo, Brown Sugar.
Even in an otherwise post-Y2K lineup, there was no resisting a little bit of ‘90s, as a treat.
As D’Angelo told us all about the girl who had him on his knees, the couch trio filled me in on where each wine from their tasting was from. There was a sparkling wine from Spain, an orange wine from Italy, and two reds from France. The group poured each other refills of their favorites and sank into the rhythms of the night.
“Has it been a long week?” I asked them. They looked at each other and laughed.
“It’s been a long life,” Kerrie replied.
“I love it when we’re cruisin’ together,” D’Angelo sang, creating an intimate world of devotion and one-track love. “If you want, you got it forever,” he promised, easy, like it was something that didn’t even need to be said.
At the bookstore’s back table, friends Brandy Spruill and Shanna Ragland contemplated Missy Elliott’s 2001 album Miss E… So Addictive. They were looking through Little Lion Collective’s record collection, all of which was for sale.
D’Angelo’s presence in the night’s lineup was sacred, as he had passed away only a few days earlier. Santino made sure to flip the record to bless attendees’ ears with both sides of the R&B legend’s debut studio album.
8:30 p.m. – Victoria Monet, Jaguar.
Jaguar got a flip too, mostly because “On My Mama” was on the B side, and Santino couldn’t skip that.
“On my Mama, on my hood/ I look fly, I look good,” Monet’s voice filled the space, an instant classic that felt like it couldn’t have possibly been released as recently as 2022. Her instrumental pause before each final word in the hook is nothing short of ear candy. The conversation turned to a common Victoria Monet topic: how underrated she is, all the hits she wrote and gave to other singers, and how cool it is to see her shine in her own iconic records.
Santino promised pop punk by the end of the night; they had a Paramore album ready for closing call.
Near the front of the store, wine club members got into the nitty-gritty of their 9-to-5s and Halloween plans. When they stood up to part ways, they asked for each others’ names again, having made it past the level of strangers and on to friends.
Jaguar’s time on the turntable was wrapping up.
“Jisu, what next?” Santino called out to me, flipping through their record collection. A frequent kitchen playlist dabbler, my mind was on transitions. D’Angelo to Victoria Monet was smooth, but how were we going to make it to Paramore by the end of the night?
Santino pulled out Japanese Breakfast’s 2021 album Jubilee, and I felt in my heart it was right. Then I went ahead and chose something different, just because I was craving it. I couldn’t bring myself to be sorry.
9:10 p.m. – Olivia Rodrigo, Sour.
The jump was rough, though it did pull us closer to Paramore.
At this point, the vinyl night had reached almost-complete turnover between the early birds of wine club and fashionably late nighttime arrivals. Attendees bopped along to the bridge that stole a summer back in 2021, from Rodrigo’s “Driver’s License.”
“Red lights, stop signs,” Rodrigo sang, breaking up tragic poetic melodies with a resolve to lay out the bitter truth. By the second “I still fuckin’ love you, babe,” returning to the chorus felt like waving across a river, so completely on the other side.
“When you gonna tell her/ That we did that too?” Rodrigo asked in “Deja Vu,” her jilted teenage lover angle too good not to sing along to.
The vinyl’s first side ended with a tease of music to come, Rodrigo’s “Good 4 U” echoing Paramore’s 2007 “Misery Business” so strongly Paramore frontman Hayley Williams was retroactively added to the writing credits the same year Sour came out.
9:30 p.m. – Japanese Breakfast, Jubilee.
For all my Sour fun, I was relieved to see Santino had indeed saved Jubilee to play next. It was a great record to play in a bookstore, as the band’s lead singer Michelle Zauner is an acclaimed writer inside and outside the booth. I crouched toward the end of Possible Futures’ nonfiction section to pull Zauner’s 2021 memoir Crying in H Mart.
Attendees chatted, read books, and settled into their cozy seats as Japanese Breakfast put a pop funk groove to heartbreaking pleas.
“Be sweet to me baby,” Zauner’s voice reached out from between the vinyl’s grooves, “I wanna believe in you, I wanna believe.”
9:50 p.m. – Paramore, All We Know is Falling.
We made it. Now was the time for heart-to-hearts in the corner, resonant guitar chords, and Hayley Williams singing, “This isn’t what you wanted.” Angst and volume were turned up high, and the end-of-the-night vibes dropped us deep in nostalgia. No matter how everyone’s week might have been, our ears and hearts were united in Paramore’s 2005 pop punk sound.
