When you're in high school, simple insights can feel like revelations. I can remember one idea that appeared to be a brilliant bulb at the time: science fiction functioned as an educational defense system for society! Books like 1984 would alert the public to totalitarianism, and we'd never have to worry about the government encroaching on our rights. Likewise, after one glimpse of Montag's wife in Fahrenheit 451, couch potatoes would rise up out of their corporate-induced stupor. But one quick reading of Paul McAuley's Gene Wars burst my bubble. Fifteen minutes later my stomach was turning uneasily and I couldn't get images of the "Splicing Your Own Semisentients" home biology set for kids out of my mind. Now my alma mater beams Channel One edutainment directly into the classroom, and serves McDonald's exclusively in the lunch hall.

Sadly, "Short-Staffed at the Gene Pool" isn't a futurist concept album about biotech labor shortages. Nor is it much of an improvement from Ruby's 1995 debut Salt Peter, a mediocre affair typical of the 2nd-gen trip-hop being released back then. Singer Lesley Rankine was thought to be the Ruby in the title (no doubt due to the morass of singular diva names), and the musical contributions of the other member of the duo, Mark Walk, were obscured. Walk has produced and remixed industrial projects for years, from Skinny Puppy to KMFDM, and now collaborates regularly with Ogre, who's dubbed him "kinda the man as far as polishing turds." Walk brought a good mix of edgy hiss and hip-swaying pop to Ruby, splicing a few blues licks here and there between the percussion loops to add some soul.

It's a shame to see Rankine still rooted in the same stagnant lyrical imagery. Her songs are binary compositions; sometimes she's the predator, sometimes the prey, but she's always locked in this game with an unnamed other. She tried to be the ice queen on Salt Peter, but her fixation on the phallus ruined too many songs, from "Bud" ("Take your jewels in my bag and take them home to mama") to "Salt Water Fish" ("If I could taste your salty head/ And pick your dead hair from my eyes"). The trend reached its climax when that album's most embarrassing line ("And if tomorrow didn't come/ Would you?") got seeded through nearly half of Short-Staffed, the most embarrassing instance being, "Baby comes two times and with his touch/ I feel a warmth, and peace that wholeness brings.../ And it feels like butter runnin' over me/ Butter, and I'm won over, yeah.../ And it tastes like..." Make all the arguments for ambiguous verbiage you like, this is too obvious to be sensual songwriting. Does she really think making herself a target for facials is erotic?

Content doesn't matter, though, during a song like "Queen of Denial" when you've got Rankine's contralto whispering across the lobes of your ears, inflecting words in strange, cutesy ways over a frame of double-time standup-bass and jazzy trumpet samples. Ruby has shed its harsh skin and slipped into accessible pop, and it's not altogether a bad thing. The opening track, "Beefheart," brings out the R&B; diva that's been lurking inside Rankine, and she just repeats, "Don't you wanna come and play with me?" while analog synth and cyclic beats trade turns in the background. When you let your body listen instead of your mind, tracks like "Lilypad" will catch you doo-doo-dooing that radio-friendly two-step, and occasionally the music leans way back to the early 80's and there's just a hint of joyous abandon-- somewhere between the Tom Tom Club's "Genius of Love" and Sade's "Smooth Operator."

Too much jazz without any acid can be a bad thing, though. Gone are the sudden jackhammer crashes that rose up in Salt Peter, and don't expect much deviation from conventional songcraft. On "Lamplight," Rankine sings, "I'm still running around in here/ I'm still looking for me," but with all the pleasant MJQ-issue vibraphone rolls, you just don't feel the angst. The best song on the album, "Roses," steals the drum-n-bass from Goldie's "Dragonfly" and kicks out a jittering pulse that fractures Rankine's otherwise soothing lullaby. Facets of progress can be isolated ("And you might think this deal is done/ But silk is worm until it's spun"), but for the most part, Ruby hasn't evolved far from the first album. Short-Staffed at the Gene Pool expresses the fun side of Ruby, but as one trait reaches dominance, another recedes. It's going to take more effort to bind these two helical strands, tension and release, into an album that will turn heads.

-Christopher Dare