Lissy Trullie: Self-Taught Learner

A A A Comments By Ray Cummings Wednesday, May 27 2009

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With the Virgins and Anya Marina,

9 p.m. Thursday, May 28,

at Rudyard's, 2010 Waugh, 713-521-0521 or www.myspace.com/
rudyards.

www.myspace.com/lizzytrullie

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There's a dry, tomboyish cool to Lissy Trullie's brand of songwriting — the same quality she brings to her modeling work. She's emotional, but neither excessively or academically so, fetching without being overtly flirtatious. Debut EP Self-Taught Learner rolls along with a decidedly offhand imperviousness: guitars jostle casually, rhythms pulse, Hot Chip cover impresses, love's less a battlefield than a tabula rasa upon which to sketch designs for an even more cavalier full-length (probably). Ringed with mocking wooooos and strips of post-Strokes fret monochrome, "Boy Boy" stares down and sneers at some scenester-boi playa straw man: "All the notches in your belt make your pants tight / And all of your buys, hanging around / Take take your sloppy seconds, or whatever, man." "She Said" sets girl-to-girl chatter to some dance-rock jangle, while the title track swipes the clipped, parched textures of '80s stadium pop — think the Police's "Every Breath You Take" — and shuffles in ivory chips for a first-love remembrance that's as deeply heartfelt as it is mildly standoffish. "Are you watching me? Am I different, or am I the same?" she inquires of the former object of her affections — the same sort of questions that some unscrupulous reviewer could redirect in a few years, should her star ascend.

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