Video: The Record Company, ‘How High’

Kevin Bronson on July 8th, 2021

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The Record Company (Photo by Travis Shinn)

Ever since their passionate roots-rock started spreading like a contagion in L.A. a decade ago, the Record Company has brought the past into the present. After all, when Chris Vos, Alex Stiff and Marc Cazorla first jammed together, it under the mantra that they’d listen to nothing made before 1974.

Indeed, their first recordings — and subsequent collections of covers — plumbed music history for influences. Despite their protestations that they should not be labeled a blues band, their 2016 debut “Give It Back to You” nonetheless earned a Grammy nomination for best contemporary blues album. And whatever its sound and label, it felt like the blues.

Comparably, their new single “How High” sounds modern — only natural since the trio took their original aesthetic to the limits on their 2018 sophomore album, “All of This Life.” The new single, and director Nathan Cox’s exuberant video, is big and bold, the song retaining the Record Company’s straight-ahead approach.

It’s the first single from the trio’s third full-length, “Play Loud,” produced by Grammy-winning Dave Sardy and arriving Oct. 8 via Concord. The album sees the band working with outside songwriters for the first time ever (Kevin Griffin and Sam Hollander on “How High”) and, as they say, stretching out.

“On the first two albums, people might have thought we were three guys who sit around a campfire, praying to Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker, and we’re not,” Stiff says. “We’re three different guys with different musical tastes. It’s time for all of us to show our individuality, and this record shows us evolving.”

Then and now, as Cox’s video suggests, they’d turn your house party into a rager.

||| Watch: The video for “How High”