Rainbows and Pots of Gold

There are songs that sound like a precise moment, as if the air from a rehearsal space had slipped into the studio. Rainbows and Pots of Gold is one of those: a track that breathes the urgency of recording quickly to avoid losing the spark of what they already sounded like live. Kelly Jones made it clear when he said he wanted an album "raw, spontaneous, but layered", and in this cut from You Gotta Go There to Come Back —the fourth album by Stereophonics— you can tell the plan worked. The 4:11 fly by, but leave the feeling of having listened to a live take, with mistakes included and sweat stuck to the amplifier. It’s not a song that beats around the bush: it starts straight away, with that guitar that seems to tear through the air just like in their concerts, and Stuart Cable’s drums setting the rhythm without concessions. Richard Jones’ bass, that other Jones in the band, acts as a bridge between the roar and the detail, as if each note carried a specific weight.

The album was recorded in 2003, in a three-week sprint where the band locked themselves in to capture what they already were on stage: a rock machine with lyrics that speak of streets, bars, and that grey light only mining towns in Wales have. Kelly Jones handled the production, which wasn’t common at the time, and the result was an album that reached number one in the UK in its first week, selling over a hundred thousand copies. What’s curious is that, even though commercial success was already smiling at them, the album sounds like a band that still doesn’t quite believe what’s happening. There’s a tension between the intimate and the epic, as if each song were a piece of their life hung on the studio wall. Rainbows and Pots of Gold, with its title evoking something between the magical and the earthly, fits perfectly into that puzzle: it’s rock with roots, but with its wings wide open.