Cuisine en Locale was crowded on Wednesday November 4th with a mixed bag of audience members, as well as a good mix of openers for the headlining set, Allison Weiss. An acoustic set from the Northampton-based Dump Him opened the night with a sense of camaraderie and intimacy. At around 7pm, with banter about Canada and cell service, Kid in the Attic, a music project created by Mirah guitarist Maia McDonald (+ friends), set a sweetly edgy tone for the rest of the lineup.

With McDonald’s soft but husky vocals, lush instrumentals from members of the current live lineup (including Krystine Summers on keys and drummer Steph Barker), and a consistently perfect ratio between the two, the amount of dedication and focus put into this music easily translated. But the band also just naturally emitted this silly, enthusiastic atmosphere. Maybe it’s because each member was so into what they were doing. It could’ve been that their set featured a backup dancer— seriously, it was just someone’s friend straight up dancing on stage— quite well might I add. Whatever it was, the energy in that room was transfixing.

Up next, L.A. (and formerly Boston) quartet Winter took the stage and filled it with sultry dream pop and some more enthusiastic stage presence between band members. Slouching vocalist Samira Winter delicately but boldly crooned into the mic while the three bandmates who backed her up, Matt Hogan on guitar, bassist David Yorr, and Garren Orr on drums, created music that could verge on new, hip easy listening, making for a solid middle-man set.

Next to last, Mal Blum (and band) started up, making it glaringly obvious why they were on the same bill as Allison Weiss. Armed with gut-wrenching, first-person narratives about everything from body dysmorphia and depression, to Robert Frost, to kissing and barfing on New Years, and the infamous pop punk accent to pull it all off, Blum’s set was well-prepared and well-received. Blum’s sound is the same vein as folk punk act Theo Hilton, Toby Foster, and Ryan Woods, but with a fuller, more electric sound when played live (especially since dropping their latest record, You Look A Lot Like Me). Sick harmonies from bassist Audrey Zee Whitesides certainly indulged their more developed, but definitely still gritty punk sound. Also, big shout out to drummer Steph Barker, who consistently banged away on the drums for the second round of the night. Towards the end of their set, Blum made a couple of really important comments about media and the music industry, noting how journalists often diminish the value of women’s and non-binary songwriter’s work by claiming it’s all only about love and heartbreak. As if most of Drake, or Brand New, or Bob Dylan’s songs aren’t. As if love and heartbreak and human emotions can’t be taken seriously if it’s not coming from a cis-man. To this, Blum gave some solid advice: “Listen harder, ya dillweeds.” And on that note, the crowd was prepped for the headlining set, for songs all about love and heartbreak and human emotions.

Allison Weiss has been around the block. She made her start in Athens, GA, quickly gained a massive following among pop-punk-loving queers and breeders alike, and after dreaming of making music in the Big Apple, moved there. Then, as if Ilene Chaiken wrote the script herself, the lesbian from the American South got engaged and moved to L.A., where she now walks hand-in-hand with her fiancé down streets lined with palm trees, with Betty’s awful L Word theme playing in the background. Or so I imagine.

Weiss’s new album, New Love, narrates that really difficult process of change in a familiar way. But one thing about her new sound is for sure. The Allison Weiss that you discovered making acoustic covers on Youtube with her brother in 2008 is long gone. With a full band and a full sound, Weiss’s trajectory is much more electronic-fueled pop than punky, raw-fingers-on-streel-strings-fueled pop.

And I can’t help but compare Weiss’s slight transition of sound on New Love to Tegan & Sara’s transformation from folk pop to electronic pop in 2013 with Hearthrob. It’s very much the difference between East Coast and West Coast-made music. Sure, there were nostalgia-filled moments during Weiss’s set, like when she played classics “Fingers Crossed,” her now-famous cover of Robyn’s queer-girl anthem, “Call Your Girlfriend,” “Wait for Me,” and the finale “I Was an Island.” But for the most part, Weiss unsurprisingly stuck to a setlist of songs from New Love.

But what was hasn’t seemed to change is Weiss’s general demeanor. Her banter is still wicked funny. She still shamelessly self-promotes. She’s still writing songs about things she can’t get over. And her fans are still relating to her music. We show up for her tour. We still sing along a little too loudly, with eyes shut, to her over-the-top finale version of “I Was an Island.” And we wait for the next time Allison Weiss comes back around again. And she always does.