You Could Move In, the debut EP from New Brunswick, NJ singer-songwriter Ruby Ryan, opens with a big beat. Before long, the rhythm track is joined by a melancholy – but gritty – electric guitar riff. In a few quick strokes, a mood is established: longing, urgent, expectant, a little lovelorn, more than a little pugnacious, forward-looking. It’s stark, and unadorned, and emotionally bare; once you start listening, it’s hard to stop. A full half-minute elapses before Ryan starts singing, but she makes an indelible impression when she does. Ryan has a voice with enough tensile strength to carry sadness and determination simultaneously. She doesn’t have to try to be powerful; she just is.

Her address doesn’t tell you everything about her, but it’s meaningful nonetheless. Ruby Ryan stands in a long tradition of coruscating, wide-awake, self-aware confessional writing from Central New Jersey rockers. Yet Ryan is more than just a genre practitioner. She covers an astonishing amount of stylistic territory on the six songs on You Could Move In, including rough-hewn folk (“Slow Dive”), sleek, vocal-enhanced electropop (“Funeral”), and even a bit of overdriven funk-rock (“Green Tea”). But the best place to start with Ruby Ryan might be “Phosphenes,” an exercise in straight-ahead, doomed romantic storytelling. Everything about the track feels absolutely real: the plaintive lyrics, the missed connections with the object of the narrator’s desire, the stinging six-string, and the catch in the singer’s voice as she expresses her hope and her frustration. Anybody who has ever harbored unrequited affection – or who has just found themselves caught in a difficult and ambiguous relationship – will surely relate.