You Are All I See by Active Child
LABEL: Vagrant

New Jersey’s Pat Grossi, the brains of Active Child, was a choir-boy. Less than a minute into his debut album, after a radiant flourish of harps like sunlight fractured into rainbows by raindrops, this is readily apparent. What’s also readily apparent is that Active Child is further developing the sound exemplified on his first release, 2010’s wonderful Curtis Lane EP. His sound is steeped in synth-pop, but also influenced by the likes of James Blake, Bon Iver, and occasionally — when he’s at his best — R&B. Ever since moving to LA from Denver in 2008, Active Child has been crafting this very specific niche, and this album delivers it like a sucker punch from a smiling cloud.

There’s a good amount of stylistic eclecticism on display here, though strongly grounded in the eighties, for better or worse. The album plays more like a collection of songs than a bona fide narrative arc, but that’s not necessarily a problem. Grossi’s voice is the star of the show, of course. The glimmering, wandering opener and title track exemplifies the more etherial strain of the album, also on display on tracks like “Ivy,” brimming with ebullient synth, or the mournful “Johnny Belinda,” though that track is less of an ascent to the sky and more like laying inside of a raincloud of your own dark longings, with its church bells and synth strings. It’s actually Pat Grossi himself playing harp on a lot of this album, I want to think. It’s a nice touch.

“High Priestess” builds from sparse harp plucks and a resounding, spacious beat to a sparkling climax led by a bright synth with a descending melody and plips of water in the rhythm section. Many of these songs are led by pounding beats that are very much redolent of the eighties, and I actually think that they limit Pat Grossi somewhat, musically. A song like “Way Too Fast” sounds a lot like James Blake in the way it carves a mood out of silence and warps Grossi’s angelic voice into another musical element, sometimes veering into gorgeous dissonance — a tendency that, while an important aspect of the album, would be exciting to see developed further — but it never really feels like it’s going anywhere. Besides my ambivalence regarding the rhythms Grossi chooses to work with, the songs here are often less led by songwriting structure and more by mood.

  Active Child by Vagrant Records

But consider the second and third tracks, obvious standouts for me. In an album led by the aesthetic of the eighties, these two R&B-influenced songs would stick out like planet-sized pimples on a flat forehead — except these pimples are amazing. “Hanging On” uses the same palette of sounds as some other songs on here — a harp, trashcan drums, Grossi’s pretty voice back-masked to become part of the beat. But the presence of a clear chorus is what makes the song so powerful. At abut 5:30, it actually breezes by, and bears repeating. A glorious synth comes in during the back end of the track, adding texture to the music and in a sense tying it into the rest of the album, which is more about mood and texture.

Then there’s the other standout, “Playing House,” featuring experimental R&B artist How To Dress Well. This song has no harp at all, and would fit nicely alongside tracks from How To Dress Well’s debut LP. It’s far and away my favorite song here, and shows just the kind of trickery up Active Child’s sleeve. It’s especially interesting in light of this song, the album’s first single, that Grossi chose to move the album in a completely different direction. It’s actually kind of a shame, because as pretty and enjoyable as the record is, it doesn’t try to break any new ground — from the sound of things, Active Child is definitely capable. “Playing House” does right everything that an artist like The Weeknd (as much as I enjoy his nihilistic day-after-the-party music) does wrong: it’s incisive in its songwriting, only a little longer than three minutes, but it’s brimming with emotion. In fact, for all the exploration of mood on the album, it’s this song that’s the moodiest.

I’m griping, but the fact is this is definitely a wonderful album. Grossi is tasteful in his use of space and texture — the piled and piercing synths of “Way Too Fast” or “See Thru Eyes,” the decisions made about whether his harp will serve as lead instrument or musical punctuation, and of course his voice like a ray of sunlight working its way through the cracks of anyone’s hardened heart. But the other fact is, this is an artist that could be breaking significant new ground in R&B, as exemplified by the aforementioned standout tracks. Instead, Grossi chooses to reimagine the eighties — granted, in a wonderful way, but most of the songs only really sounds like music to lie down or take a walk to, while the eye-opening second and third tracks could also become firey indie-dance hits. The only other track that comes close to being that is “Shield & Sword,” but it’s not nearly as infectious.

I’m conflicted, because it seems strange and unfair to me that, even as I enjoy this album, I’m partly judging it by what it could have been if Grossi’s tastes were in a different place. I do this with many, if not most albums, but I feel guilty doing it with Active Child’s debut because I like the music here a lot. It’s a well-done vision of the eighties. It shifts between a lot of different moods pretty seamlessly. There’s a great musical ear at work here, unquestionably, a burgeoning talent finding his way. I like this album a lot, but an album of songs like the second and third tracks is one I would’ve loved, and one whose melodies I would’ve struggled to keep out of my head. As it stands, though, this is a great end-of-summer debut, and it says a lot about the quality of the music that I can even justify to myself criticizing what it could have been, as opposed to what it is. Recommended.


REVIEWED BY MANUEL ABREU
MANUEL’S FAVORITE TRACKS: “Hanging On” • “Playing House”

FREE MP3: “Hanging On”
FREE MP3: “Hanging On (White Sea Remix)”
FREE MP3: “Playing House”
FREE MP3: “Playing House (Chad Valley Remix)”