It’s been a minute since we heard from Active Child—unless you caught his 2015 record Mercy, which he’s aware you probably didn’t. “It flew under the radar,” he shrugs, not bitter, just honest. “Including yours, I guess,” he teases.
But life happened. Marriage, pregnancy, a house, and a quiet withdrawal from the noise. “I’ve been busy with life’s moments,” he says, sounding like someone who found a much-needed pause button. “And I didn’t want to come back until I was ready.”
Now he’s back with Cruel World, the first single from an upcoming LP he says is 70% done—and emotionally loaded. Unfortunately, it arrived under eerie circumstances. The song’s digital release coincided with the bombing at Ariana Grande’s Manchester concert, a jarring twist of timing that left him uneasy. “It felt strange,” he says. “I didn’t want it to seem like I was capitalizing on that event. It was just a total coincidence.”
Still, Cruel World felt painfully apt. “It came from a lot of different things,” he says. “The 24-hour news cycle, this barrage of fear everyone’s feeling, and I lost a close friend about a year and a half ago.” The result is a shimmering meditation on collective trauma, grief, and what he calls “unhealing”—that gray zone where we feel everything all at once and fix nothing completely.
“There’s this emotional weight everyone’s carrying now, even if it’s not personal,” he says. “It’s taxing, it’s trauma in slow motion.”
The new album—still untitled—carries that same theme. “I want to touch on healing and moving people through emotion. That’s what I do best.” And he wants to do it on his own terms. After parting ways with his label, Active Child is officially in indie mode. “There’s more pressure now, but more freedom. I don’t want to be chained to the album-album cycle. I’ve got so much music I’m sitting on, it’s ridiculous.”
He’s no longer chasing hooks or playlist placement. “That stuff, it inhibits the creative process. I just want to make what feels right to me. I don’t want a hundred voices in my head asking where the chorus is.”
He’s aiming for an October release. “I’m tightening all the screws,” he says. “It’s getting there.”
So no, he hasn’t been gone. Just recalibrating. And now, with new clarity and a mountain of unreleased music, Active Child is ready to remind us why emotions—when done right—don’t need a hook to hit hard.
Listen to the interview above and then check out "Cruel World" below!
