Comments (0) Best Singer-Songwriter - 2012
Active Child
Pat Grossi's stage name is Active Child, which refers to his precious, youthful tendency to put his ears right up to the speaker to get a better listen. The moniker is a bit cringe-inducing, and indeed the lyrics on the Pasadena resident's 2011 full-length debut album, You Are All I See, aren't for those too cool to attend school. They're unfiltered, unvarnished, filled with pummeling emotional honesty, through the eyes of sometimes-vindictive characters whose feelings are crushed over and over but nonetheless expect next time to be different. "I fall in love, way too fast," he sings on "Way Too Fast." "You're so damn cold, soon you'll be all by yourself." Produced by composition genius Ariel Rechtshaid, Grossi's songs are often accented by electronic flourishes and harp, and almost all of them feel like climactic scenes in dramatic movies — the part where we learn Bruce Willis is dead, or that the woman in The Crying Game is a man. This is not music for the ironic of heart. activechildmusic.com.
—Ben Westhoff
