About Group – Don’t Worry by DominoRecordCo
About Group – You’re No Good by DominoRecordCo

Start and Complete, the sophomore release from About Group is the whirling exploration of a tremolo-heavy soundscape. Comprised of members of Hot Chip (Alexis Taylor), Spiritualized (Tom Coxon), This Heat (Charles Hayward) and electronic exploration specialist Pat Thomas, About Group came together as an unrehearsed experiment. Taylor, the principal songwriter of the album, gave acoustic demos to each band member just days before the recording was to take place at Abbey Road Studios. Start and Complete was then recorded in a single day.

The album is keyboard heavy with Wurlitzers and organs dominating the majority of the songs as Taylor’s yearning tenor meanders through each track. “Don’t Worry” features a toe-curling organ glissando in the introduction that sets the easy, down-tempo groove which is the modus operandi for Start and Complete. “Lay Me Down” is another noteworthy track. The song’s bluesy beginning is quickly surrounded by Thomas’s sine wave sketches that flutter with increasing insistence throughout. It’s moments like these that push the group’s sound out past the blues-funk, jam band territory and into something further out the ether.

The rest of the album progresses without much variety in sound and begins to lose momentum by relying too heavily on the Wurlitzer and organ skeleton’s Taylor provided. About Group regains some strength, though, on their cover of Terry Riley’s late 60s reprise of “You’re No Good.” Capping at just over 11 minutes, this extended jam not only features the excellent musicianship of all four members, but also has a real energy that isn’t present in the same manifestation anywhere on the album. The overwhelming highlight, “You’re No Good” shows About Group getting caught up in the moment and allows their jubilation to ventilate.

The album closes with the same fare of down-tempo, tremolo-glazed sonics and crooning vocals that was the only territory really explored. Though the lack of variation in sound is a turn-off, Start and Complete features some moments of brilliance from all four players, giving appreciators of jam bands something to satiate their appetites. Start and Complete is a perfectly pleasant record to put on for boozy summer afternoons and probably gets better when you’ve had a few.