Bars of Gold released their second album, Wheels, a couple of years after I'd got into them. The song Coffee With Pele came out in the August and got me very excited; the album followed in October. I'd been meaning to buy their debut, Of Gold, for two whole years by that point and still hadn't managed to. I came very close once, but was worried they hadn't set up the international postage rates correctly, and felt bad that I might be screwing them over by making them pay the rest of the postage. Anyway, when Wheels came out, Of Gold had sold out on Bandcamp and I couldn't find anywhere to buy them both from at the same time to save on postage and customs fees. Six years later, these reissues came out, and were crippling expensive, but I'm just glad to finally have copies.
Coffee With Pele was a huge song to drop before the album came out - the shouts of "Howling like wolves" in the chorus are brilliant and exactly what I wanted from the band. But the great thing is that it's not even the best song on the album. Connected and Blue Lightning are probably the highlights though - the addition of some smooth backing vocals added a depth I wasn't expecting but was thoroughly into, and the chorus of the former is huge. On their third they stepped it up even further in terms of unexpected sounds for a punk band, but here it was a total surprise and I loved it then and now. Hey Kids starts the album off quite jangly and constantly feels on the brink of falling apart (but in a good way) and 22180 is another highlight.
As you can see in the pictures, the colour of this album is amazing; it's up there amongst some of my favourite looking vinyl. Splatter vinyl always looks great, but the choice of colours and the way the splatter doesn't reach the middle is just lovely to look at.
Format: 12"
Tracks: 10
Cost: £33.74 new
Bought: Equal Vision website
When: 23/03/19
Colour: White with yellow, orange and green splatter
Etching: none
mp3s: none
