Nostalgia lives within our tastes, like literally in how your memory and brain work in tandem to determine how much and if you enjoy whatever new experience you are using your senses for. I have a tendency to want to resist this, especially in music, where new sounds are always thrilling. Perhaps you can become addicted to discovery as much as you can enjoy nostalgia, but I am no neurologist. I do think, there is a very special feeling that comes from the merger of discovery and nostalgia. That’s definitely why music critics are so wont to compare new things to old things. So, lemme cook, and tell you about this band: Activity.
Activity do not fit easily into a single genre. The New York quartet has been putting together some mix of alternative and indie rock with elements of electronic music, informed by goth, ambient, and krautrock since their 2020 debut, Unmask Whoever. 2023’s mournful Spirit In The Room, showed Activity growing deeper into their own sound, filling in the spaces and gelling as a band with more confidence and chemistry. Now, Activity is offering us their third and most realized and ambitious project to date on A Thousand Years In Another Way.
Opener and lead single, “In Another Way” sets the nervous/juxtaposed energy of the album with its slow-build Spaghetti-Western guitars over a motorik beat, undulating bass and synth drones lurk in the background as the whirlpool relents to let Travis Johnson’s vocals slink into the mix. Later, he is joined by the band’s second vocalist, Bri DiGioia, for the refrain of ‘Who will marry me now?/All the good husbands have drowned.’ This track, alone, reminds me of Radiohead, with its nearly danceable beat, driving guitars, and overall sense of unease and paranoia, yet this comparison is all over A Thousand Years In Another Way.
“A Piece Of Mirror” follows with snippets of found sound and an ethereal, dark synth build under a post-punk bass groove. DiGioia’s vocals hover above the mix like something from Low, sweet melodies and longing lyrics while the synths pulse. This sweetness contrasting the lingering sonic menace is a key element of A Thousand Years Another Way, as the album often moves between moments of charming beauty and a feeling that things are not well in the world. This nuanced and artful approach, as well as their bass-heavy sound also calls to mind Chicago art-rockers FACS.
“We Go Where We’re Not Wanted” throws nursery-rhyme like melodies over more stuttering and haunting kaleidoscopes of rock and electronic music. While the comparatively upbeat “Your Dream” turns any semblance of uplifting dream-pop into a horror story as Johnson sings, ‘Because your dream is as stupid as mine/I’m setting fire to your house,‘ emphasizing the absurdity of contradiction. Later on the album, “Heavy Breathing” channels Depeche Mode and New Order providing a bit of nostalgic warmth amidst the density of the rest of the album, although not without some complexity of its own as drum-machines skitter and synthesizers and guitar swell into a passage that Robert Smith would adore. The soft alt-rock guitar opening of “I Came Here To Harm You” mirrors this sentimentality while the titular chorus gives dream-pop vibes.
The sound on this record is massive, enveloping in its spaciousness so that each louder and noisier part feels more aggressive to push its way through the layers of atmosphere. This is in part due to the production, helmed by Psychic TV‘s Jeff Berner who with the band manipulated sounds and acoustic spaces of the recording studio to create this masterpiece of sonic scaffolding. This can be heard on the introduction to album closer, “A Beast”, where each new musical element feels like it can be placed in a performance space. By the end of the ever-building track, the heft of all of the sounds almost breaks a threshold before cutting out, the beast conquered, or perhaps victorious. Like any piece of good art, this is open to interpretation.
A Thousand Years In Another Way is a career-defining achievement for Activity. Their masterful blending of myriad sonic elements and genres erupts with art rock charisma, every disparate element working in full submission to the precise hands of the band. I was expecting a great record from Activity when A Thousand Years In Another Way was announced, but I was not expecting it to outpace so many of the incredible albums I have heard this year. They have grown into their own, their vision achieved to its fullest potential, and deserve the highest praises for it. No other record this year, so far, has tapped into my nostalgia while sounding as unique as this one, the coolest band out of New York City since Interpol.
