Ruby's Short-Staffed at the Gene Pool

There's an abrasive edge to Lesley Rankine's second solo album that lifts it above most of her contemporaries'. Some of this probably comes from her previous sojourn as the fiery Scots singer with London mind-expanding noise terrorists Silverfish. Silverfish were a band notable both for their demonic, exasperating, energetic live shows, where the bass and drums frequently seemed to be following different tribal leaders, and for inventing the much-beloved festival t-shirt slogan "Hips, Lips, Tits, Power." They weren't Riot Grrrl, far too grungy for that, but they had all the makings of some damn fine evenings out?if you liked to dance.

Some of this schooling has clearly rubbed off on Rankine's new triphop career: no lazy, breathy, sexy, girlie vocals here (a la Sarah Cracknell). No not-so-subtle appeals to parts of the male anatomy. Rankine approaches dance music the same way her forebears like Crass anarcho-collective recording artist Annie Anxiety or the Pop Group approached dance music: as a tool of expression and subversion.

Rankine has seen some bad times between this album and her previous one, 1995's mostly unrealized Salt Peter. Following a world tour in '96, she moved to New Orleans. Six months later, the clothing of a murdered woman from across the street was dumped in her trash. She left the city five days later and moved to Seattle, recorded a track with aging Welsh lech Tom Jones before it became fashionable, appeared in a Mountain Dew tv ad and then spent three years in limbo while her British record company Creation decided they'd had enough of putting out crap Status Quo imitations and called it a day.

Still, the wait seems to have done her good. Everywhere on this record are the most unexpected sounds, a scary or sequenced vocal, gracefully flowing beats that take a sudden hiccup or judder just because Lesley has a short attention span. This is triphop, sure?but triphop as defined by eccentric Bristol singer Tricky's exotic fancies, or Bjork's less commercial flights of freedom. "Fly," for example, could hail from a time when Augustus Pablo's dub dalliances still held sway, "Grace" is both beautiful and unsettling, "Lamplight" uses vibes but not in an irritating way. Most of this is because Rankine does the whole ugly/glamour interface thing so well, and also calls in some cool indie names to help her out, among them Girls Against Boys' Eli Janney, Her Space Holiday and Dot Allison. When Rankine started her tentative career as a femme chanteuse, it seemed she'd fallen in thrall to fashion: now everyone else has moved on, leaving the field clear. This is a record to do her former band proud.