Glancing at her bio, you'd be forgiven for assuming Lissy Trullie would take herself too seriously. The 28 year-old singer, born Elizabeth McChesney, boasts elite art-school bona fides and has modeled for the likes of Elle and Vogue. After starting her recording career with a promising teaser of an EP (Self-Taught Learner) in 2009, Trullie's eponymous full-length debut has been fashionably late in arriving. The first single to be released from the record was "Madeline", an exhausted dirge that plays up husky-voiced Trullie's uncanny ability to channel another model-turned-chanteuse, Nico, complete with Velvets-y guitars.
Fortunately, Trullie isn't really interested in being a po-faced artiste. The majority of the album's other 10 songs are no less derivative than "Madeline", yet Trullie deserves credit for displaying the good sense to at least diversify her stylistic take-offs. More importantly, she's not nearly so self-regarding as to stand in the way of a good hook. The biting "It's Only You, Isn't It?" may drip with unearned affect, but it also gladly gives way to an irresistibly raucous refrain. Trullie lets a nice bassline do most of the heavy lifting on "You Bleed You", while horns cheekily undercut her sober verses on "Wearing Blue". Better still, the jittery post-punk rush of "Caring" and "I Know Where You Sleep" gets kissed with a pop sweetness that explains the frequent comparisons that Trullie has elicited to Chrissie Hynde.
Occasionally, Trullie even evinces a willingness to stretch beyond strictly late-70s/early-80s confines of verisimilitude, particularly with the horn-laden indie pomp of opener "Rules We Obey" and the loose-limbed, National-esque "Spit You Out". Unfortunately, these chameleonic sonic tendencies don't manifest themselves in any facility for adding variety to the stories Trullie's lyrics tell. Mostly the words either broadly suggest some downtown licentiousness or function as meaningless placeholders to serve Trullie's sneer or the music's evocation of reckless anomie. Luckily, Trullie's in expert hands here with producers John Hill (Santigold, M.I.A.) and TV on the Radio's David Sitek, and like any poseur worth her salt, she can make a superficial costume seem compelling without drawing too much attention to the fact that the person inside of it may not have a whole lot to say.
