Vinyl love: The Rural Alberta Advantage “Mended with gold”

(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)

Artist: The Rural Alberta Advantage
Album Title: Mended with gold
Year released: 2014
Details: Black vinyl with gold flecked splatter, limited to 300

The skinny: Without planning it, I kind of started a mini-series on one of my favourite Canadian indie rock bands, The Rural Alberta Advantage. Over the last two weekends, I have given their first two records, “Hometowns” and “Departing”, the Vinyl Love treatment, mostly because I was in a mood to listen to them, but now that I’ve started, I might as well go the whole way. The Toronto-based trio released their third record on Paper Bag Records in 2011. I somehow missed out on pre-ordering the first pressing in black and gold striped vinyl that was limited to 300 units. Yeah, that one sold out super quick but I managed to get in on the second run, this one also limited to 300 and pressed to what looks at first glance as plain black vinyl, but if you look real close, you catch the glints of flecked gold streaks. And much like the first two, I fell for music on “Mended with gold”, pretty much on first listen. The production on this one is amped right up, giving the trio a real rocking sound, especially showcasing the spellbinding drumming of Paul Banwatt, whose work has always put this band in a class of its own in the indie folk realm.

Standout track: “Terrified”