Pat Grossi's a harpist, an ex-choirboy, an Active Child; precious, no? Nah, not really. Grossi's gauzy, twinkly Active Child songs feel at once rather humble and astronomically huge. Bits of Animal Collective's stacked harmonies, Dazzle Ships' askew shimmer, and M83's post-New Order epic pulse coalesce in Grossi's tidy yet titanic sound, stretched out over six songs and 30 minutes on the Curtis Lane EP. Precious? More like prodigious.
Tracks here comes in a couple of varieties: there's the hazier, sultrier, slower numbers, and the ones you can dance to. Grossi's smart to keep the two sides in balance, but while the thumpier numbers have their charms, they seem a bit timid next to the others' sky-streaking grandeur. "I'm in Your Church at Night" seems to stretch on forever, matching Grossi's heaven-sent falsetto to a lush rumble not unlike a screwed'n'chopped "In the Air Tonight". His compositional skill is really something, moving beats and harp plinks and negative space in and out without disrupting the majestic scope of the tunes. His falsetto, a touch meek on its own, has a dreamy incandescence when piled on top of itself. The harp's far from the focus here, but coupled with his voice, it provides a organic counterpoint to the synthetic sounds constantly shuffling underneath him.
Grossi's hand as a dance producer isn't quite as steady; deft as he is at matching sounds, there's a reason you don't hear much harp in house music, and the throb he throws under half the tunes here never quite seems to knock hard enough to actually enter the realm of the danceable. Perhaps that's not the point, but the reedy "Take Shelter" doesn't have quite as much vitality as the stretchier stuff, sounding at times like any number of bedroom Bernard Sumner. A stuttery sample of Grossi's voice makes head-nodder "When Your Love Is Safe" the best of the dancier bunch, but "Weight of the World" is bogged down by too much thump and a sharp vocal downshift; his falsetto's lovely, his tenor not so much. It's not that Grossi oughta give up trying to get people to move, but his dance music's just a smudge too cerebral, and besides, the more extravagant numbers are moving enough as is.
Grossi's limited means seem to have pushed the cosmic, stately side of these tracks to the forefront; these tunes might be huge in effect, but they're fairly modest in execution, and one hopes Grossi can maintain that homespun feel should bigger and better things befall him. And they oughta; lord knows if I were charged to soundtrack the big smooch in a teen movie I'd snatch up the rights to "Wilderness" or "I'm in Your Church at Night" post-haste. These songs just feel climactic, durable, far greater than the sum of their parts. If this guy can almost get you to dance to harp songs, just imagine what he might be capable of creating.
