After releasing their third full-length collection of proggy psych-rock last month, there was only one thing left for Atlanta’s Improvement Movement to do: re-record each individual song in the bed of a glass-encased truck as it drove around New York City. The band’s “Glass Box Truck Sessions” have been materializing one at a time, and for the third installment of the series they jammed through the five-minute “Common Place” while cruising—well, lurching—down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.
As the band notes, the vibrant indie-pop tune addresses the Flock camera era of our surveillance culture, its creeping pace making for a slightly uncomfortable listen despite the lightness of Improvement Movement’s sound. “‘Common Place’ is about the increase in police surveillance and how it has affected our ability to safely gather and organize in third spaces,” the band shares, “which are rapidly dying as corporate interests take over communities and neighborhoods for things like data centers, police training facilities, and other real estate developments that extract necessary resources like water and power.”
Which makes the consumerist setting of the video all the more prescient—especially in its opening moments. “When we were driving around New York looking for somewhere to shoot this song, it was a total coincidence that we would start the session on a block with tons of cops getting out of their patrol vehicles. We kept shooting that song for about an hour, but the most obvious take felt like the one with the police over our shoulders.”
Check it out below, then watch their performance of “In the Morning” on the Cross Bay Bridge and “Carry On” spanning the Kosciuszko Bridge.
