About Group - Start And Complete

This is a collaborative effort between Poindexter from Hot Chip, Charles Heyward out of This Heat, a Spring Heel Jack and another bloke. Poindexter sings and plays lovely sounding Wurlitzer and Hammond organs, backed up by Hayward's very busy drumming. The effect is something akin to an early Steely Dan practice session. The sound is very raw and under-produced yet the songs have a lot of melodic promise. It sounds like they've just gone into the rehearsal room and recorded what they have done. The problem being that Hayward's drumming is far too busy for the arrangements cluttering them up and the wandering electric guitar sounds improvised and detracts rather than adds to the melodies. I was interested to hear the Green Gartside collaboration Repair Man, again potentially a good song certainly with plenty of the Scritti Politti charm but like everything else here it sounds like four people who are simply not listening to each other when they are playing and are all concentrating on their own parts which of course is the key to pub band hell, which unfortunately is what this sounds like despite potentially good songs. I'm sure this was part of the plan for a raw, improvised feel but I'd have preferred a producer to have come in and sort this mess out, cutting out all the unnecessary chaff as well as some ego's.