Activity
A Thousand Years in Another Way
Western Vinyl
All is not lost, but darkness is closing in on Activity, the experimental art-rock collective understandably wary and disillusioned on the mesmerizing A Thousand Years in Another Way, as the forces of greed and malevolence sell our body politic down the river and rot our humanity. Activity is not masking their disaffection. They’re swimming in it.
Unwilling yet to go underground or hide in a safe bubble, the bewildering current state of our disunion weighing heavily on their minds, Activity is more concerned with how to live through it and not completely unravel in the process. Even at their most vulnerable, they cling to slivers of optimism in a moody, stylish manifesto that could have been written by Radiohead or Calla. Activity – now a team of Travis Johnson, Jess Rees, Bri DiGioia, and Brian Alvarez, the lot of them culled from acts like Russian Baths, Grooms, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, and Peel Dream Magazine – dreams just as big, even if their ambitious approach to piecing together and layering found sounds and mercurial, atmospheric electronica with exploratory indie-rock often yields more propulsive paces, but also turns cold and seductive when under threat.
Take “A Piece of Mirror,” its celestial, expansive wonder anchored by muffled, thumping beats, pushing its passengers out into the softly echoing clangor, hyperspace beats, and disorienting blackness of “We Go Where We’re Not Wanted.” Like alien transmissions from Broadcast, the disembodied vocals in danger of floating away, they throb with anticipation and urgency, while the cinematic synth-pop of “Heavy Breathing” pulses with excitement, just like the rippling and hustling opener “In Another Way.”
That’s when a distrustful Activity asks repeatedly, “Who will marry me now? All the good husbands have drowned,” as static-filled noir and increasing anxiety fill the air. Icy and addictive, a ghost ship slowly moving through the Arctic Sea, “Scissors” is utterly captivating, whereas “I Came to Harm You” is deliciously ominous and creepy. Activity deftly switches male and female lead vocals in a beguiling manner, and even though they maintain a certain mystical aesthetic throughout, A Thousand Years in Another Way offers so many interesting variations on the theme that boredom is likely to never be encountered. Suspicious Activity has been reported.
Activity
-wb Peter Lindblad
