Passenger: All The Little Lights

The last time Passenger – Mike Rosenberg to his mum – was in Ireland, it was playing to packed houses at two of Ed Sheeran’s three-night stands at Dublin’s O2. On the evidence of All The Little Lights, it might not be too long before Rosenberg is headlining such giant singalongs himself.

Like the ginger swinger, the Brighton native’s stock-in-trade is wordy, worthy tunesmithery, delivered with the ear of a street poet and the earnestness of a teenage romantic. Recorded in his adopted home of Australia (like his previous two solo albums under the Passenger moniker), with a host of local musicians, the arrangements are folky for the most part, with gently plucked guitars and barely a skiffle of percussion, with strings or brass occasionally augmenting the sound. All the better to concentrate on Rosenberg’s deliciously sweet rasp and his clever lyrical conundrums.
With tracks like the state-of-his-nation ‘Life’s For The Living’, Passenger sometimes comes across like a more melodic version of Skinner’s Streets, although he’s more wide-eyed than wide boy. He has his vices, but they’re mostly of the legal kind: “My liver may be fucked, but my heart is honest” (‘Things That Keep You Dreaming’).
Like many a troubled troubadour, love lost looms large (‘Let Her Go’, ‘The Wrong Direction’, ‘Feather On The Clyde’) and bittersweet melancholia is grist to the mill (‘All The Little Lights’, ‘Circles’, ‘Holes’). It’s not all mucho serioso, however, as evidenced by live track, ‘I Hate’, a hilariously tongue-in-cheek Room 101 of pet gripes, or the stunning ‘Staring At The Stars’, an insistent, rollicking word-fest where “beer bloats our spoilt guts and shit jobs keep us in ruts.”
“Who needs love when you’ve got silicone and strap-ons?” he sings, while the brass section floats delightfully in the background. Passenger, though, will never be cool. Hipsters will doubtless sneer down their horn-rimmed glasses at his passionate honesty, but like Sheeran, David Gray before him and Mike Scott earlier again, Rosenberg is possessed of a an articulate eloquence that seems to transcend cynicism. A truly gorgeous record.