Review: Improvement Movement's polyrhythmic sounds benefit from being forced into the tight format that is their new ep, My Team.

On “My Team”, we see Improvement Movement cover a surprisingly wide amount of terrain for a three-song EP, displaying some very high-contrast material. While these songs are certainly a more compact version of the band’s standard fare, they still offer us the same magic sprawl we’re accustomed to exploring, and in the process, they bring some usually less prominent instrumental voices to the fore. 

The EP’s title track is an up-tempo surf of uncomplicated affirmations tumbling down over Marshall Ruffin’s guitar, mostly variations of Clark Hamilton’s earnest conviction that “we got it”. Before flanging out into a sunset, we’re taken aside and given the advice that “there is no strategy, only what you believe” without a hint of disingenuity. 

The centerpiece here is definitely “Medicine”, an interestingly baroque and ennui-laden meditation on mortality (“Time is flying, we’re all dying”). Despite flecks of optimism, after a brief and ominous mountain-climb of drums, it rounds down into the bleak reverbed conclusion “Maybe there’s no medicine for you.” “Medicine” reflects a more polished and time-conscious variant of the gentle psychedelic mazes (glimpsed on songs like “Too Far or Bill”) which Improvement Movement held our hand through in 2024’s Slump. 

Photo: Trent Wayne

Woozy finisher “The Knife” is a bit sillier, a dangerous cartoon studded in the middle with a jewel of a mandolin solo. A crazed (and semi-serious) refrain of “I’m a suburban animal, I’m an urban cannibal” threads through lilting examinations of the ways the world forces us into rough shapes (“I had a box that was stolen in front of my door, now I have weapons all hidden up under the floor”). Choosing to package almost-Hobbesian observations with that kind of bouncing discordant humor is pretty on-brand for a band that revels in tongue-in-cheek. 

The group’s polyrhythmic sounds benefit from being forced into a tight format, and “My Team” showcases that very nicely. Overall, it’s fair to consider Improvement Movement’s latest EP an encouraging signal flare for things to come.