Well it certainly sounds like it was improvised. About Group is an indie rock supergroup of Hot Chip lead singer Alex Taylor, This Heat drummer Charles Hayward and a couple studio musicians, and their debut album, Start and Complete, is essentially a recorded jam session that’s been cut up into individual songs. The album is certainly a meeting of excellent musical minds in terms of Hayward’s excellent percussion work on songs like single “You’re No Good” and the group’s general ability to make distinct movements sound like legitimately planned songs, but, like a regular jam session would entail, the album has a lot of lulls in which very little goes on, and one can tell in those moments that the group is struggling to find a direction. That’s the risk with albums like Start and Complete, and, for the most part, About Group overcomes it. Still, I would be more likely to suggest “You’re No Good” as a testament to the group’s talent as opposed to the album, itself.
