“Wilderness”
from the EP Curtis Lane
2010
iTunes
However you feel about bedroom pop’s recent infatuation with synth textures, the simple fact that more self-produced indie artists have a deeper interest in dance culture feels like a encouraging trend. The more integrated the two fields become, the more interesting the music should get. “Wilderness,” the second single to circulate from L.A.’s Pat Grossi, who records under the handle Active Child, is a good example of the positive results to be yielded from a musician straddling two disparate styles. The song, which is markedly chillier than Grossi’s previous track, “When Your Love is Safe,” sets the singer’s trembling falsetto (which recalls both Antony and Justin Vernon, though is perhaps not as preternaturally gifted as those two) over a sputtering dubstep arrangement, creating an unsettling tension. The instrumental and vocal parts seem almost at odds with one another — voice traveling upward, programmed drums dropping off into the distance — and the result is simultaneously hopeful and downcast, echoing Grossi’s irresolute lyrical claim of “It’s so cold, but you know we belong here.” Active Child’s style, which seems to share an interest the American indie-folk of Fleet Foxes and UK producers like Burial, works on the same level as recent mixed-genre acts such as Bear in Heaven: music that pulls from different directions but still manages to aim forward.