Los Angeles – It’s woodsy and a little sad.  Like listening to years, images of country and sea, and her home on the other side of the world (New Zealand).  Tiny Ruins performance on Saturday consisted of a lone girl, her guitar and a very tiny space.

“I usually play with a band,” said Hollie Fullbrook, and she asked the audience to imagine them behind her. The singer of TR is folksy, from head to toe and even to her name. She wore a print dress, black tights and Dr. Martens, and played to a small crowd at Lot 1 café, an eclectic space with rugs on the floor and carved wooden ships and canvases on the walls.

“It’s quite nice to be alone again,” said Hollie, who started out playing that way. “I might fire my band,” she said, and quickly laughed it away. “I can’t live without them.”

Like all the sets at Culture Collide festival this past weekend (an event named for its international lineup), she played for only 30 minutes. The short set was enough to get a full idea of Tiny Ruins. Named in a fortuitous moment when, while reading a book that mentioned ruins, a favorite Tiny Bradshaw song came on the stereo, TR is a “Kiwi” band that’s made some significant noise overseas. Their debut, Some Were Meant for Sea, was hailed by BBC World Service program The Strand as one of the top five albums of 2011. The New Zealand Herald said,“From time to time an album comes along that stops you in your tracks and demands you to listen. [This] is one such record.”

TR, signed to Spunk Records (Aussie label also home to She & Him, Arcade Fire and The Libertines, to name a few) has spent much of the past three years touring New Zealand, Australia and Europe. They have opened for Beach House, Joanna Newsom and Fleet Foxes, and toured with Calexico. Mostly a duo (Fullbrook and bass player Cass Basil), TR was joined by drummer Alexander Freer to produce Haunts, their 2013 collection of “early songs,” recorded on an 8-track. Their next album, Brightly Painted One, will be released in early 2014.

Fullbrook is sweet and a little self-deprecating. She’s clearly a storyteller. She introduced each song, all of which had a concise, visual inspiration: This one’s about catching a ferry across Cook Strait in New Zealand (“Running Through The Night.”) Or, this one’s “about a Russian,” Chekhov, who ordered champagne on his deathbed (“Death Of A Russian.”) It was refreshing to get such a clear idea of someone, their personality, their interests.  It’s like you can almost fully know her from watching her perform. Each song presents like a story, and each song looks like nature and like the pictures she creates.

There’s an air of anxiety around her performance—but only slightly. Fullbrook was born in Bristol, England and started playing cello at a young age before moving to New Zealand at 10. When she was 14 she picked up a guitar for the first time and started to teach herself in her spare time. After traveling alone in the US, she moved to Wellington in 2005 to study law and English literature. It was only after an open-mic night (that a friend dragged her to) that the closeted singer/song-writer started pursuing her music.

”I had a phase of thinking that being a songwriter or playing music was something that I didn’t deserve,” she told The Age, a Melbourne publication. ”That I wasn’t good enough, that I didn’t have any claim on it.” Fullbrook has gotten over those feelings, and while the insecurities read only occasionally, the first-time L.A. performer was absolutely beautiful to watch.  A haunting voice and a stunning talent.

Her last show before leaving the states is in L.A. on October 23 at Silverlake Lounge.

Photo By Ben Anderson