"Where has honesty gotten me lately?" Adrienne Robillard sings on "Appearances," a track from Citizens Here and Abroad's debut full-length, Ghosts of Tables and Chairs. But on an album marked by confessional lyrics and other emotional outbursts, even "Appearances" 's cynicisms come out sounding sweetly heart-stricken, suggesting the question remains unanswered.

Robillard (vocals, guitar) and Dan Lowrie (guitar, vocals) from Secadora and Chris Groves (keyboards) and Chris Wetherell (drums) from Dealership have put together an album that pleasantly echoes the more lucid moments of early-'90s British dream pop. Catchy guitar lines and dynamic shifts between slow, hushed beginnings and orchestral crescendos give Ghosts plenty of drama, but the charm is often in the vocals. "Microphone" 's emotional pressure comes in the wistful, drawn-out delivery of a line like "I know it's somewhere out there if I could only get there," in the tension between the verses' measured tones and the chaotic counterpoint of the chorus. "In Flight Movie" slows its pace for a gorgeously unhappy line in which the narrator's head fills with unwanted ideas. Throughout, the album holds the pleasure of Robillard and Groves's warm, slightly swoony harmonies, which have a romantically melancholic quality befitting an album populated by ghosts. Citizens Here and Abroad play a CD-release show Sat/10, Bottom of the Hill, S.F. (415) 621-4455. (Lynn Rapoport)

Totimoshi
Monoli (This Dark Reign)

Oakland's Totimoshi's third full-length, Monoli, is their finest hour. Rhythmic, lumbering, and threatening, it kicks off with "Vader," an excellent smart and heavy song that's followed by others like it, which offer more of the same swaggering menace found on earlier releases. The album has everything you'd expect as a fan of the band or an aficionado of Black Sabbath-Blue Cheer heaviness mixed with a punk attitude and complex structure.

But then, hey, suddenly you come across a song that sounds ... melodic. Downright catchy. That track, "Make Your Day," could easily be a college radio hit – it shows the same sort of balance between heavy rock and pop that Nirvana perfected, before the formula was copied by a thousand soulless imitators. "Light Lay Frowning" possesses an understated, almost erotic, quiet swing. "The Hero Released from Fright" could easily be a soundtrack to a particularly engaging thriller. There's variety, but it sounds coherent, not forcibly eclectic.