Ready For The Floor: Lissy Trullie

Not for the only time during our interview, Lissy Trullie has just responded to a question with both a guilty smile and a nervous shudder. “No…,” she says, pausing to collect a warm drink from the table in front of her. It would seem my enquiry as to whether she always realised she could sing was a bit foolish. As Trullie relaxes back into her seat, she continues her answer, emphasising every syllable. “I was ter-rif-ied to sing. I like…it really took a lot of people pushing me, reassuring me that I should be singing.”

For the record, I had a feeling Trullie would respond like this. When I saw her perform at the launch of her debut EP in New York in February the show was fantastically energetic, imperturbable and, most of all, refreshingly fun. Even so, Trullie herself was clearly nervous (despite performing in front of a home crowd); the image of someone still finding their feet at the front of stage.

Today in a deserted basement bar in East London, she looks much the same as she did then: tall…very tall, and wearing her familiar short black leather jacket and figure-hugging mini skirt. She’s just returned from playing two shows with her band in Paris which are sandwiched between her first ever UK dates (all in London). “They went well,” she says of the performances so far. “We’re from New York, we’re used to a tough crowd - but we won them over, so that’s good.”

Trullie is used to having to battle in order to win people over. Although she has been playing music since she picked up her first guitar aged “11 or 12”, it’s only in the last two years that Trullie, now in her mid-20s, has finally begun to realise her potential. One of the biggest hurdles has been trying to prove herself to people who mainly know her from her occasional work as a model. In one of Trullie’s most high-profile shoots, she appeared in Elle Magazine’s romantic punk couture feature last year. (The magazine recently called her an “all-around it girl”.) “I think people are really quick to judge about somebody who did something like that,” she says, smiling nervously again. “I don’t find it in anyway like relevant or having anything to do with my music.” Although Trullie made “good money” from modelling and got to travel a lot, it was, she insists, just another way to supplement her music career. “It was really just, like, I worked as a waitress, I worked as a janitor, I did some modelling, whatever.”

Does she still model? “I do it sometimes for friends, or if somebody’s really gonna pay me some money then maybe I’ll do it, but I’d prefer not to.”

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