With Ruby Series, Rebecca Gates continues her music's evolution into the ideal vehicle for her voice's sensual lassitude, filling the spaces of her sonic canvas with an exquisite array of delicately brushstroked keyboards, vibes, acoustic bass, electronic and acoustic percussion, and guitar. While that voice and her melodies give the music its surface appeal (check out the Bacharachian grace of the opening track, "The Seldom Scene"), the more impressive aspect of this release is its textural and rhythmic artistry. "Lure and Cast" mounts a tapestry of vibes and electronics overlaid by rippling guitar and organ highlights, while "I Received a Levitation" sets multiple vocal parts against duelling harpsichords. Throughout, Noel Kupersmith's rich, woody acoustic bass provides the ideal acoustic setting for the songs' arrangements. Kupersmith also plays keyboards and vibraphone, while Gates's guitars and singing are complemented by Mikael Jorgensen's keyboards and producer John McEntire's percussion and electronics. That this CD is produced by a percussion player makes sense, in that its songs reveal an exquisite sensitivity to rhythmic interplay and tempo. Most tracks are slow, but avoid the tedium that slow tempos can evoke by skillfully layering rhythmic patterns. Opening track "The Seldom Scene" contrasts its waltz-time ennui with a lovely interlude of ringing Wurlitzer, vibraphone, and glockenspiel, in which the denseness and rapidity of each instrument's part corresponds to its pitch (the glockenspiel plays the most notes, the Wurlitzer the fewest). "Move" begins with a near-motionless swirling organ as backdrop, upon which Gates's singing and guitar, along with Kupersmith's bass, tentatively establish a tempo. Alongside all of this is a quiet hi-hat loop, heavily distorted, stuttering a rapid tattoo of sixteenth notes, seemingly in an entirely different metric from the rest of the track. As the bass more assuredly stakes out its tempo, followed by voice and guitar, the other elements of the track fade to the background, giving the impression that the song's tempo has changed. In fact, it has merely shifted its rhythmic focus, a trick that "The Colonel's Circle" accomplishes by different means, primarily by guest percussionist Brian Deck's skillful handling of his kit. He varies the density of his attack, playing fewer notes here, more there, to give the impression of varying tempo while maintaining a consistent pulse throughout. Each one of Gates's releases - from the first three Spinanes albums to this, her first solo title - has demonstrated both confidence and a clear progression from its predecessors, while developing a consistent and recognizable style of songwriting. The main weakness of Ruby Series is simply this: it ends too soon.

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