Album Review: Active Child- Rapor EP

For a dude who performs under the moniker of Active Child, Pat Grossi’s one-man project certainly was inactive for, like, all of 2012. After a stellar 2011—the release of his debut LP You Are All I See, and an opening slot on M83’s fall tour—Grossi just kind of faded away until resurfacing this past spring with “Evening Ceremony,” a slow jam that was unfortunately connected to that Stephanie Meyer movie The Host.

(Stephanie Meyer made you a mixtape, you guys.)

One of the things that made Active Child so unique was the combination of an uncommon instrument—the harp—as well as Grossi’s own take on the “deconstructed R&B” genre that emerged a few years ago. The co-sign of Tom Krell (AKA How to Dress Well) on “Playing House” certainly helped in that regard. While there were always some 80s influenced synth leanings, Grossi never put them in the foreground of his music.

That is, until now.

The Rapor EP sheds the cinematic, somber tone of You Are All I See, and favors up tempo beats and relies heavily on an array of synth sounds. It’s not necessarily bad, but it’s also not as instantly likeable. Structurally, it is a bit shaky at first—finding its pacing midway through with the ballad “Silhouette.” The second half is actually exponentially better than the first—the aforementioned “Evening Ceremony” serves as the obligatory closing track, while slick “Calling in The Name of Love” drips with a 1980s pop song vibe.

I was about to call the first half of Rapor forgettable, but that’s not really true. Opening with an obligatory intro track lasting all of two minutes, things launch into high gear quickly with “Subtle,” an incredibly fast paced, dancey jam, featuring the vocal stylings of up and coming performer Mikky Ekko. “Feeling is Gone” follows that, a track that sounds alarmingly similar, continuing to make things not forgettable, but also not memorable.

Since so much time (two whole years!) has passed since the release of You Are All I See, and Rapor, I went back and revisited Grossi’s debut full length to see if I was romanticizing something about it—like I was remembering it wrong, making it seem better than it really was, which would explain my utter lack of interest in his new effort. While it had the tendency to get a little “samey” on a few tracks, it has remained unique because of an atmospheric shroud of mystery covering much of it. Rapor is really lacking that sense of mystery—the production values are incredibly clean and up front sounding. It’s only by the time the Ellie Goulding duet “Silhouette” arrives when you begin to hear anything truly resembling Grossi’s past sounds.

The harp is sadly missing from a bulk of Rapor’s material—a technique that leaves me wondering if Grossi is tired of being “that guy with the harp,” similarly to how Sufjan Stevens grew weary of being “that guy with the banjo” and allowed himself to drown slowly in an ocean of synthesizers. Active Child, as project, has only been…well, active…for three years now, since 2010’s Curtis Lane EP, so it seems a tad bit early for a musical identity crisis.

Rapor is not a step backwards, nor is it a step forwards for Pat Grossi. It seems to serve as a slight detour, and hopefully by the time he begins work on a second full length LP, he’s able to get Active Child back on the right track.

Rapor is available now via Vagrant Records.