Activity: A Thousand Years In Another Way

Activity has always had an aptitude for prescience. Take their era-defining debut LP, the eerily titled Unmask Whoever, which was released in the first weeks of the COVID pandemic. Three years later, their follow-up, Spirit in the Room, was, indeed, just that. (Listening back, and it still feels like said spirit is stalking the hallways.)

Sonically and thematically, Activity occupies the space between your dreams and nightmares. It’s always made them a tough band to place, which is equally their greatest strength and weakness. On the latter point, in a world where little time is afforded to really let someone else’s art wash over you, it perhaps renders Activity as a band not for these times, making them one of those jewels from the crown to be treasured by the feverish few.

From the majesty of Unmask Whoever – an album that was a pivotal crutch during one of the strangest periods in our generation’s history – to Spirit in the Room, which possessed its own unique allure, Activity continues to feel their way through this burning world on their third full-length release, A Thousand Years In Another Way.

Mysterious Motion: In Conversation with Activity’s Travis Johnson

Said to be conceived from their own period of uncertainty, recorded by Travis Johnson (vocals/ guitar), Jess Rees (vocals/guitar), Bri DiGioia (vocals/bass), and Steven Levine (drums), A Thousand Years In Another Way captures the weight of these times. Activity, guiding listeners through the miasma of hope, hopelessness and paranoia – the latter of which grows stronger each day. Perhaps Rees puts it best during We Go Where We’re Not Wanted, as she sings, “If I was untethered / I would die”. It feeds into the idea of a constantly shifting world and how it ceaselessly overwhelms. No one thing, ever staying the same.

In many ways, it’s the perfect snapshot of the Activity remit, and just one of the many poignant sketches throughout A Thousand Years In Another Way. Starting with In Another Way. Part medieval part motorik, it sees Johnson lifting the lid on the first of many abstract passages that offer as many hairpin turns as a Don Winslow plot (“Passed right through me dead… All the best blood shed, flowing right for anyone”).

Elsewhere, on A Piece of Mirror and Good Memory, Rees and DiGioia trade gentle vocals that barely pierce through the rolling mist of sound. Jeff Berner’s production, glacial-like in what is art rock built for cinema; Activity, making their audience work with songs more designed as deep listening exercises than goth-tinged post-punk.

While these new facets are welcomed ones in the band’s canon, it’s the backend of A Thousand Years In Another Way where Activity really breaks into their stride. Firstly with Scissors – deep cathartic dreamgaze through a kaleidoscope of soft colours that exposes that inexplicable feeling that only Activity’s music can arouse.

Then there’s the collage-like electronica of Heavy Breathing – something that feels more like peak Moderat trading in sunset festival slots for dingy rock clubs. With a line like, “See a portion of a scar / Underneath bed slept on / By the last psychic on earth”, once again, Johnson continues to part with notebook musings that burn deep into the mind.

And speaking of, I Came Here to Harm You sounds like a dreaded Ellroyian fable. Sonically, it’s Activity at their most cutting and clinical best, reaching those same moments as I Like What You Like, White Phosphorus and I Like the Boys. Moments where Activity wields the blade and plunges it straight through the heart.

Mirror Image: In Conversation with FACS’ Brian Case

Which is fitting considering they end A Thousand Years in Another Way with a song inspired by Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. A Beast, art rock at its darkest and most captivating, and as Johnson unfurls more lines akin to prose dancing off the page (“I saw the beast, bloody and wild / Down on its knees with the mind of a child”), it underlines the fundamental aspects of A Thousand Years in Another Way, which, at times, feels more like a series of short stories than songs that form an album.

While Johnson’s moments undoubtedly resonate as much as they ever have, equally Rees and DiGioia reach similar heights in what is Activity’s most democratic release so far. On the hushed Her Alphabet, the band unveil one of their most telling lines with “All along / We don’t belong to anyone”. It could be construed in various ways, whether it be socially, politically, or even as a direct reference to themselves. An acknowledgement of their outlier status, where once again, Activity stylistically blur the lines like few others in the pantheon of post-punk.

Not just sonically, but Activity’s narratives are equally etched to the shadows, and it’s this kind of art that always possesses the greatest pull for those with curious ears. This doesn’t change on A Thousand Years In Another Way where, once again, Activity revel in the shadows, with songs that will grow stronger as the days, weeks, months and years pass.

A Thousand Years In Another Way is out now via Western Vinyl / Cooler Than Smoking. Purchase from Bandcamp.