Yeah, in current pop culture terms, lounge/exotica is as dead as…well, pick your dead thing and insert it here, but the bubble has more or less burst on the ‘50s music revival scene that thrived in the late ‘90s. Part of the reason for its speedy extinction was the fact that there’s really only so many ways one can ape Martin Denny or Esquivel before you sound like a museum piece, or worse, a tribute band to a style of music that was marginal during its heyday, and as anyone will tell you, that is NOT rock and roll.

Houston’s 14-piece Clouseax avoids that thorny situation by embracing a wide variety of styles on their debut CD for retro-minded Dionysus Records: there’s percussion-driven Hawaiian stomps (“Shrunken Heads”), snaky Latin grooves sliding around echo-drenched Ventures guitar (“Walking from Juarez”), and staccato brass punching their weight in a Eurospy movie vamp (“Copper Locked Nymph,” “A Most Excellent Flying Death”). Even with the full menu of sounds offered here, Lagoon! runs up against repetitiveness in its brief running time (38 minutes), and you may find yourself drifting, shipwreck-style, on the island vibes midway through the disc rather than frugging with style on your mental dance floor. But drinks all around to Clouseax for exploring the full spectrum of the exotica sound on this disc, and for bucking music trends in general. Grazie, ladies and gents.

—Paul Gaita