[Fairly Reviewed] A Crowd of Small Adventures - A Decade in X-Rays

Genre: Indie, alternative, folk, rock

I read a lot of music sites and a high point each year is to see everybody's top albums and tracks of the year. A lot of the time I find some really great new music but over the past few years they've become somewhat homogenized. And then you have a travesty like 2010's A Decade in X-Rays by Las Vegas quartet A Crowd of Small Adventures flying under everyones radars.

Well, it's time to rectify that situation.

Lead singer and guitarist Jackson Wilcox (whose voice reminds of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - especially in 'See Her') and co. have put out one of the best indie rock albums of all year...err all last year and also this year so far.

With so many bands turning to chillwave or lo fi type music because it's the flavor of the month, ACoSA does't have too; they can actually play their instruments, write beautiful ballads, and inject emotion into every note without resorting to gimmicks.

A Crowd of Small Adventures - See Her



The real joy of listening to ACoSA is hearing how they can mix the wavering voice, folk-style acoustic guitar and violin, pulling basslines, and drums that hold back until just the right moment into soaring, layered harmonies. Nowhere is this more evident that the single 'Bang Bang.'

The single and video feels like it's pulling multiple songs and stories into one masterfully interwoven patchwork quilt of a epic.

There are so many highlights on this nine song album that if I continued to go through them it would just look like the track list (long way of saying I really dig every song). From the poppy 'More and More,' with it's overlaid piano riff to 'Gemini,' the song I would die to see live to 'Bone City,' the drunkard's irsh-style ballad you can really see how the band put their heart and souls into fine tuning every note to perfection.

You can listen and buy the whole album at their [Bandcamp]  or tour around the [Website / Facebook] to see what the band is up too.