Music / bluesy
Review: The Record Company, The Fleece
Tuesday night the numbers were sparse at The Fleece except for a few connoisseurs and a bunch of kids there to crack a few dance moves…but it didn’t matter. The Record Company played an electric set, ready to light people’s fire. The LA-based trio, which released their first album “Give it back to you” in February 2016, still needs to get known from the British public. In the United States however, they have supported acts such as Nathaniel Rateliffe and the Night Sweats, B.B King, Dawes or Blackberry Smoke and their album is a 2017 Grammy nominee for Best Contemporary Blues Album. The Record Company is ready and deserves their own shining moment, well outside the USA. The band is raw, authentic and vibrant with a soulful electrifying energy.
The musicians started with “On the move”, blasting power from the first note. The band’s ambidextrous instrumentation, which gives plenty of different shades and colours to their songs, was exposed from the start. When Chris Vos, the lead singer, put down his guitar, he grabbed a harmonica and started a crazy solo, drawing everybody’s eyes on his powerful stage presence. The emptiness of the room was already forgotten. With his dynamic jumps and his connection with the audience, it was hard not to stare at Vos. He kept repeating that they played rock’n’roll, naming John Lee Hooker and Elvis Presley as sources of inspiration, after a few songs they’d got people grooving and “shaking what God gave them to shake”. He won the local hearts when introducing “Hard Day Coming Down” with the funny anecdote that he tasted “proper cider” at the Old Duke the previous night but experienced the perilous consequences of a night fraternising with the Old Rosie.
Their set was mesmerising and mind-blowing at times. When the musicians got carried away in long musical flourish where the guitar or the pedal steel responded to the strong bass lines and the groovy rhythm of the drums. With “Crooked City” Vos demonstrated his wide vocal capabilities, mixing a high-pitched tone to a deep pure voice. “Feels so good” was groovy and bluesy and the instrumental passage resonated the psychedelic rock from the sixties. The venue started to get a bit busier and by the time they played “Don’t let me get lonely” everybody was stomping their feet and moving their hips.
is needed now More than ever
Their set was promised to be “incendiary” and it did not disappoint. The only downside was the duration of the performance, due to the band young discography, which lasted an hour or so. People wanted some more at that stage, maybe a cover or two could have been the finishing touch to their brilliant set.
The band wrote and recorded their album in the same living room where they decided to start playing music. They take pride in their authentic rootsy sound and what they deliver on stage is as honest as their record. After explaining to the bassist Alex Stiff why I stopped playing oboe in the classical musical world because of its competitive judgmental vibe, he agreed: “We can’t read music, we just get together to play and have fun” and that is what they conveyed on that rainy evening at The Fleece. An intimate, intense, groovy, honest, feet-stomping feast of fun for everyone who went.
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