Most conversations about music are too reliant on a sort of genre taxonomy. Critics and fans alike dissect songs and albums into distinct ingredients, dividing up the anatomy of the forms used into identifiable structures. On the one hand, these sorts of conversations are useful for making recommendations to others (e.g., if you like shoegaze, you’d love Blushing). And yes, many bands do specifically adopt certain aesthetic markers.

But at a point, this obsession over genre can bring discussion of certain artists to a standstill.

Take for instance Dreamtigers, a project featuring members of melodic hardcore heroes Defeater, and post rock mainstays Caspian. There are a lot of things going on in the outfit’s second album Ellapsis (a made-up term for a sickness brought on by the passage of time), much of them seeming incongruous to one another.

The most immediate thing you hear is the instrumentation. Guitars are run through a sizable array of effects pedals alongside a fuzzy bass and commanding drums. For a moment, you might expect it to be a rather conventional post rock album—until the vocals come in, that is. Lead singer Jake Woodruff sings a subtle drawl that wouldn’t be out of place in an alt-country band. His songwriting is simple and direct in a way that betrays a devotion to folk music. Opener “Six Rivers” even feels hymn-like at times. This directness makes for some deeply affecting lines, like at the end of “Ellapsis (Time Is A Sickness),” where he sings, “as I get older, I have less and less to say.” The gutpunch of that lyric is matched by the urgency of the track, which has shades of Defeater’s aggressive energy, save for Woodruff’s consistently restrained delivery.

Throughout the record, different shades stream through like they’re showing off how the light passes through a crystal. Folk songs burst into post rock climaxes. Indie rock hooks flit through shoegaze atmospheres, the vocals perpetually unbothered by the aural hurricane of effects pedals and driving drum patterns around them. The songs seem so tailor-made for solo acoustic performances that the lush arrangements sound almost defiant.

But analyzing this album by its individual elements is a poor explanation of the record as a whole. While parts of the music might be able to be described in terms of specific genres, the complete body of the songs defies categorization. In that way, it reminds me of the similarly genre-defying project Marriages.

At a point though, these discussions of aesthetics and genre can only go so far. The real question is, “but is it good?” And in the case of Ellapsis, the answer is a resounding yes. However you want to describe the interplay between the instruments and the vocals, what really stands out about this record is the meditations on the passage of time, and how it makes even the most fleeting moments seem eternal. The record plays the same trick: even the longer songs sound as brief as the shorter ones, and the album as a whole echoes far beyond its thirty minute runtime. By the time “Stolen Moments” fades to a close, it almost feels as if that closing chorus has been humming behind the universe forever.

It took me a few listens to force my brain to stop trying to put this record in a box. But once it stopped, the record has washed over me like waves against the shore, ebbing and flowing like the tide. I might not have the language to describe what makes this record so enjoyable, but I know that it is a wonderful collection of songs. If you want to stretch thirty minutes into eternity for a while, put this record on and let it roll over you.

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