Pat Grossi sings like a choir boy (which he once was, as a member of the Philadelphia Boys Choir & Chorale) and plays the harp like an angel (which he might actually be).

Grossi’s first album as Active Child, 2011’s You Are All I See, accentuated the floating-on-a-cloud feeling by bathing everything in an ocean of reverb. Of his second album, the just-released Mercy, Grossi has said, “I wanted my voice to be heard, and not just felt.”

The record might strip off a few layers—witness the spare and haunting “Midnight Swim” and the unplugged “Darling”—but that only serves to bring Grossi’s melancholic melodies to the fore. And that’s a good thing.

Active Child plays the Biltmore on Monday (June 29).