Over the Big Top

This detailed, thorough album does everything it sets out to do. A noisy, acoustic, dirty-country-rockabilly road trip whose artwork compliments every nuance. Appearing with an R. Crumb-esque cover and comic, these 18 songs cover a lot of ground. Bordering on indie and energetic dirty rock ’n’ roll, this band leans on its home base quite often: straight-up, old-school country. Not the radio bullshit, but the stuff you hear the old guys put on in bars. This has been the band’s conceit, or theme maybe, across lineup changes and various recordings. Adventure’s trademark vocal styling could stop a yowling alley cat in its tracks out of sheer jealousy, and the lyrics — they’re the icing. Not many locals go out of their way to create complete ambience and carry it through the music into the artwork, lyrics and attitude, so the listener feels as if he or she is entering a new world. Adventure pulls this off.