Activity: Spirit in the Room

During the first COVID-19 lockdown, everyone experienced moments of blind hope. A defiance that could override the hellscape many of us experienced during one of the most turbulent times in our history.

Sometimes it’s the little victories that mean the most, and mine came in the way of Activity’s debut album, Unmask Whoever. Not least because of the eerie prescience of the album’s title, but with the kind of unsettling soundscapes that reach the darkest recesses, the Brooklyn-based four-piece – Travis Johnson (lead vocals/ multi-instrumentalist), Jess Rees (guitar/ vocals/ keys), Zoe Browne (bass – since replaced by Bri DiGioia), and Steven Levine (drums) – created shadowy off-kilter snapshots that remain unmatched and equally difficult to pin down.

In all their eerie illusions and deeply hypnotic grooves, Activity are one of the few bands that I struggle to write about for these very reasons. Every music writer has one of those bands, and Activity are mine: purveyors of a curve ball that is their stock-standard pitch. Lyrically ambiguous and wonderfully multi-faceted, trying to unpick Johnson’s messages is like trying to read a Jonathan Lethem novel in one sitting.

While Unmask Whoever was cloaked in its own mystery, Activity’s excellent slow burning follow-up, Spirit in the Room, is enveloped in its own source of dread. The collective anxiety of COVID-19 is felt throughout these songs, however there’s the added personal trauma for Johnson, who lost of his mother to pancreatic cancer.

Mysterious Motion: In Conversation with Activity’s Travis Johnson

Commenting ahead of the release of Spirit in the Room, Johnson said “The grief was (and sometimes is) this colossal thing. I kept finding myself thinking of how I could find her or get in touch with her, like there was a phone number or address and I just had to find it.”

The blast zone is evident, but Johnson’s grief is shared on Spirit in the Room. Granted, there are several titles that appear like direct through lines, however (in pure Activity fashion) the surface level is not where this band operates. On the methodical synth-led swerve of opening Department of Blood, Activity start their journey towards uncharted waters.

The simplicity of Heaven Chords, a saccharine strum with a deep metallic resonance (“You formed a bridge from floor to sky”) is one of the more explicit moments during Spirit in the Room. Unlike the haunting echoes during Careful Lets Sleepwalk, which sees Johnson trading melodic barbs with Rees, who delivers her vocals like a spectre from another planet.

On Where the Art is Hung, this is where Activity function completely in their own world. Trance-like post-punk encased in so much mystery you can do nothing but go back to it time and time again. Here Rees takes centre stage, easing the burden for Johnson (“It’s all right / You’re here now”).

Johnson resumes his enigmatic ways on the abstract fever dream of Cloud Come Here (“Spray paint a halo on a horsehead”), while the cascading wonder of Icing is the song Clinic never wrote. Alongside the seductive sprawl of I Like What You Like – a song that unlocks parts of the brain you never knew existed (“A carbon monoxide leak / I think I love you”) – the pair are the best songs Activity have written.

FACS: Still Life In Decay

Meanwhile, the medieval force of I Saw His Eyes could be as much about Donald Trump as it is some other moondog psycho (“Under the blinding glare / I’ll meet you there / Devastating anything in our way / Maniac millionaires”).

And while Johnson’s songs can be considered as sedative, post-punk puzzles, the album’s most direct song in Susan Medical Centre ties together the story of Spirit in the Room. An absorbing track that feels like an endpoint to the kind of poignant pain bands go through to produce records such as Spirit in the Room.

It’s the type of album that makes or breaks bands, and Activity have navigated through an emotional maelstrom to create what could be their defining moment. An album brimming with blissed-out dreamscapes and abstract themes that help repair a damaged mind and mend a broken heart.

Lyrically, Spirit in the Room is one of the most accomplishment releases of the year. The kind that will only be rewarded with the benefit of more time spent in its company. In many respects, that’s why Activity are a band not born for these times; however, for those willing to break the paradigm of disposable modern-day trends, sometimes fortune favours the brave.  

Spirit in the Room is out now via Western Vinyl. Purchase from Bandcamp.