*** 1/2RUBY”Salt Peter”Work/CreationFronting the short-lived but arresting...

*** 1/2

RUBY

“Salt Peter”

Work/Creation

Fronting the short-lived but arresting band Silverfish and serving as a regular with Chicago’s Pigface/Ministry axis, Scottish singer Lesley Rankine proved herself an artist to be reckoned with--and not simply because she was a female presence in the industrial-rock boy’s club. This debut from Ruby, her Seattle-based collaboration with producer-writer Mark Walk, is that reckoning.

“Salt Peter” is a tour of ugly mornings-after, marked by self-recrimination but tempered somewhat by the salvation of lessons learned. In such songs as “Tiny Meat” and “Swallow Baby,” Rankine examines the female role in sexual politics with PJ Harvey’s scalpel-like incisiveness and, as the album title suggests, a withering glare toward disrespectful males.

Rankine doesn’t resort to Trent Reznor’s shock value, but the album does share his penchant for insistently inventive electronic-based music--though Rankine has a better sense of melody and is a real singer, not a screamer. The results can be as brutal as Ministry (“Pine”), as playful as Bjork (“Salt Water Fish”) and as lush as Garbage (“Carondelet”). This could well represent Rankine’s arrival among the most interesting people, not just women, in rock.