Albums
Rapor - EP
2014
Release Date: 2014
By Ian Cohen
Reviewed October 31, 2013
Indie rock songwriter Pat Grossi's latest release as Active Child, the Rapor EP, trades the pristine spaces of his previous work for louder beats and synths, and generally shifts from stained glass preciousness to neon pop.
Pat Grossi isn’t the kind of guy who just blends in: you don’t encounter a lot of tall, lanky, redheaded harpists with a voice that actually earns the “choirboy” descriptor. Starting with his 2010 EP the music Grossi performs as Active Child aspired to be every bit as singular, situating his rangy vocals within post-dubstep clicks, porcelain R&B and a ghosted production aesthetic. Yet, by his 2011 debut You Are All I See, Active Child became a strangely centrist affair, as artists that shared many of those stylistic tics (James Blake, Bon Iver, collaborator How To Dress Well, Jai Paul) were some of the year’s major indie figures. His new EP turns out to be every bit as momentous as , but for the exact opposite reasons. Whereas the center had once shifted to a sound Active Child had been developing for years, in 2013, Grossi’s aiming squarely for an established, already-crowded middle.