Ruby Offers a Twist on In-Your-Face Rock

Hunched over as if playing Richard III on the lip of the Dragonfly’s small stage Friday night, Lesley Rankine put a twist on the in-your-face cliches of contemporary rock: Fronting her band, Ruby, she seemed to want us to be in her face.

When not lilting out lines detailing hard lessons of sexual politics--damaged but wiser--the Scottish singer stood unblinkingly with mouth agape, twitching her head or unconsciously wagging her tongue, practically demanding to be seen and heard.

And it worked. People all through the tightly packed club strained and craned to keep their eyes on this face, which served as much as an expression of the songs as the lyrics and the stark, industrial-tinged sounds.

The real attraction, though, is what comes out of that face: a warm, rich voice that, in a musical context usually associated with harshness, is more shocking and affecting for its tenderness than Trent Reznor’s is for its strained anguish. The music, re-created from Ruby’s bracing debut album, “Salt Peter,” by three new musicians, allowed her to make her points with subtlety rather than shear force.

Rankine’s naturally compelling presence on Friday recalled a young Annie Lennox--adjusted for changes in time, place and fashions. When Lennox arrived with the Eurythmics in the early ‘80s, there was no guessing where she would ultimately go. A similarly vast range of possibilities seems open to Rankine.