Improvement Movement: “Four Guys Who Sing, A Lot”
It’s a Tuesday evening in Brooklyn, and Baby’s All Right is packed. The crowd is electric—snapbacks and baseball caps outnumber naked heads three to one. The room feels like a living mood board of Brooklyn indie style: mustaches, beards, and mullets abound. Everyone is here to have their minds gently rearranged by the Improvement Movement.
Improvement Movement are four Atlanta musicians who joined forces after meeting in the city’s DIY scene: Tony Aparo, Zach Pyles, Marshall Ruffin, and Clark Hamilton. Their music blends lush four-part harmonies, warm keys, pulsing bass, and crisp drums, all anchored by guitars that keep the whole piece hypnotic but playful. Their lyrics sway between cryptic affirmations, hopeful mantras, and casual directives that feel less like commands and more like pep-talks.
Tonight, the band hits the stage opening with “Window.” About a minute in, Marshall hits a note, the band locks into a harmony, climbing octave by octave and then… nothing. The music cuts. The room goes silent. You can hear the faint hum of the amps. No one moves. It feels like they’re punking us.
And it is beautiful. Their eyes are wide open, looking straight at us. We, the audience, look back. For a few seconds the entire room is perfectly still, perfectly present. When Marshall finally breaks the silence with a cry, the room snaps back to life and the crowd erupts. It feels ritualistic, as if we are all crossing some invisible threshold together—the first stop on a journey of collective consciousness.
The next morning, we hopped on Zoom to talk about the show. I asked them about the moment of silence at the beginning of their set. They grinned. Marshall said, “Every night, I get to wait and see what happens before I break the moment… most of the time, someone cheers because they need to let it out—but that didn’t happen last night.” Klark added, “the best music is the notes you don’t play.” They described the tension as “standing on a diving board, not sure when to jump,” and when they finally crashed back into the song, they said, “it’s relief and catharsis.” And that’s exactly how it felt—like the whole room had taken a collective breath and was finally exhaling.
Throughout the night, the harmonies were airtight, the vocal blend was unreal, the transitions were seamless; every part of the arrangement melted perfectly together. Some of the most powerful moments came when all four of them sang in perfect harmony, hands still on their instruments, not missing a beat, eyes closed. When I spoke to them about these moments, “trust” is the word they kept returning to. Marshall admitted, “When we close our eyes, we can really concentrate and connect, and it feels incredible.” I probed, asking what exactly was so incredible about it. Tony described the sensation as psychedelic, “My skull and chest vibrate together when everything locks in. It’s like a feedback loop. You feel the energy and you just want to go harder and play harder, and we give it back to the audience.” And it works, each song felt like an experiment of vibrations: part concert, part communal ritual, and part inside joke, all held together by the members’ telepathic synchronization as the audience floats on their collective pulse.
But what makes Improvement Movement so special is their unpredictability. Their songwriting is non-linear and immersive, constantly playing with your sense of what comes next. Their songs pull the floor out from under you, but instead of free fall, you land in a chamber of unexpected warmth.
That warmth unfolds in the last fifteen seconds of “On the Bus.” Just when you think the song is winding down, it takes a sudden left turn—a final, unexpected hug—before ending. Zach compared it to cooking: “You have to hold something back so the audience stays hungry. Satisfy some cravings, deny others, keep them leaning forward.”
Their shows feel like a conversation between tension and release—faultless, almost architectural in their precision. What surprises me most is the care with which they let those moments breathe and dissolve, never rushing the payoff.
When I left the concert, I knew Improvement Movement was talented, but talking to them showed me just how intentional they are. Every pause, every harmony, every left turn is deliberate. They think deeply about how the music feels, how it moves through a room, how it lands in an audience’s body. Their playing is sincere, generous and unpredictable.
When I first heard the name, I pictured a wellness seminar, the kind that sells you overpriced essential oils. But, there’s no gimmick here, you just have to listen. Before I left, I asked what they’d tell someone who’s never seen them live. “Bring a friend,” they said. “Come as you are, we’d like to think that our fans aren’t exclusionary.
And be prepared to see four guys sing, a lot.”
You can check out their music here: Spotify, Apple Music, Youtube
And their upcoming tour dates: https://myimprovementmovement.com/