: “I only make music. I am NOT a model nor a model turned singer.”

Elizabeth “Lizzy” McChesney, better known by the stage name , is an American singer-songwriter and former model. She released her debut EP, Self-Taught Learner, in February 2009, and as of 2009, performs with a band named Lissy Trullie. She released her full-length debut album on April 10, 2012.

She was born in Washington, D.C., and moved to New York City at the age of 16 with her mother. She attended Walnut Hill School, a boarding school in Natick, Massachusetts, with a focus on performing arts. She studied graphic design at Parsons in Greenwich Village and then studied art history at The New School. Trullie performed music at art openings, but soon gravitated towards the downtown rock scene. She spent time working as a model, a dishwasher, a janitor, and a disc jockey at the Beatrice Inn.

Now this new self titled album could well be the breakthrough album, check it out if you get a chance.

It’s Only You, Isn’t It?

New video produced by , for single “It’s Only You, Isn’t It?” from Lissy Trullie’s self-titled debut album, released April 10th on .

Also from the album, a live version.
Spit You Out

live @ Mercury Lounge 4/25/12

An acoustic version of another fine track from the album.
Rules We Obey

For our last act of the day, Lissy Trullie came to the bus for a brief chatting session and to play us a song from her new album coming out soon. Cut live from Saxon’s Pub in South Austin, we had a great day filming all of the acts that came by!

Madeleine (Au Palais Remix)

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.    

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