Give It Back To You (10th Anniversary Edition)(Deluxe)

To hear them tell it, the Record Company came together when three musicians friends started hanging out once a week to drink beer and listen to vintage blues recordings they'd found at used record stores, swap meets, and the like. Judging from the group's debut album, the guys in the Record Company probably have plenty of great stuff in their LP stacks; Give It Back to You boasts a casual but muscular tone that's part Southern groove (think Jimmy Reed and Slim Harpo) and part Chess Records bite (Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Bo Diddley), with a dash of the Black Keys' rootsy modernism thrown in for good measure. The Record Company know good music from bad, and they have chops to go along with their taste -- Chris Vos' guitar work is strong and well focused, while his voice is well suited to the material, and bassist Alex Stiff and drummer Marc Cazorla are an admirably tight and hard-grooving rhythm section who know how to make this kind of music move. Give It Back to You is the work of three self-taught students of the blues, and at its best, this album makes it clear they've been doing their studying in the right places. ~ Mark Deming