Album Review: The Record Company – Give It Back to You (Deluxe Edition)

Revered blues artists the likes of Howlin’ Wolf, Jimmy Reed and Muddy Waters are clear influences upon the music of Grammy-nominated trio The Record Company. But the Los Angeles-based group – guitarist Chris Vos, bassist Alex Stiff and drummer Marc Cazorla – have made a point of resisting the “blues trio” label. Preferring to think of their group-written original music as rock and roll, the band has found both critical and commercial success with its four albums and trio of EPs.

While the band has a generic name – and sometimes generic album titles like their fourth album, 2023’s The 4^th Album – The Record Company’s music is distinctive and appealing. And the group seemingly came out of the gate with a fully-formed sound and style; their 2016 debut Give it Back to You placed prominently on three American album charts: No. 23 on Billboard’s Rock Album chart, No. 17 on Nielsen’s Alternative New Artist chart, and the No. 5 spot on Billboard’s Heatseekers chart, a list tracking the sales of records by emerging acts. Notably, though Give It Back to You did not place on Billboard’s blues chart, the band’s debut LP did earn a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Blues Album.

The Record Company’s first record was released at a time when the vinyl resurgence was still in its infancy; vinyl record sales that year were less than quarter of what they would be just eight years later. So it’s unsurprising that Concord Records released a very limited number of copies of Give It Back to You in the vinyl format, focusing instead on compact discs. In fact, the vinyl that was pressed was for distribution in the UK and Europe, not the U.S. Today, used and “new old stock” copies of the original Give It Back to You vinyl record are somewhat rare, and priced accordingly.

In celebration of the album’s 10 year anniversary – and in tacit acknowledgment of the interest in vinyl – The Record Company has reissued Give It Back to You. But rather than simply repackage the record in the 12-inch format, they have added a second disc, “The Living Room Concert.” The latter is a previously-unreleased document of the band captured in 2013, nearly two years before signing a deal with Concord. Recorded at TRC Studios, the same “living room” where their inaugural LP would be cut, it features three songs that wold eventually show up on that record, plus four other tunes including a spirited cover of Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock & Roll.”

The original album’s stripped-down blues-influenced rock has worn well; it sounds as fresh and timeless today as it did on its release a decade ago. Vos’ lead vocals and the massed/chanted choruses deliver the deliberately repetitive (in the finest blues tradition) lyrics of songs like “Off the Ground.” The self-produced recording’s dry no-reverb aesthetic gives the music just the right close-up and intimate vibe. “Hard Day Coming Down” bends the field holler from to The Record Company’s songcraft. The intimate concert on Disc Two underscores the fact that the trio avoided filigree on the record-proper, employing an audio-vérité approach to recording.

Concord/Craft has also released a CD version of the Deluxe Edition; it features additional live performances, alternate mixes, demos and noteworthy covers of The Stooges and Flamin’ Groovies tracks. All are worthwhile; serious fans may well want both the 2LP and compact disc configurations.