All changed for Mike Rosenberg aka Passenger around the release of All The Little Lights in 2012. Although nominally the fifth album to bear the Passenger moniker it was the release that catapulted him to global star status. Whilst a leg up from friend Ed Sheeran probably helped, it was the astonishing success of the achingly tender Let Her Go, a single that sold several squillion downloads, that really earned Mike his seat at the big table. That album established him internationally and the gigs duly got bigger and tours longer. Passenger had arrived…
Young As The Morning Old As The Sea is the third release since this watershed, with Whispers, Volumes I & II in the interim. There’s no sign of the Passenger phenomenon having slowed, if the sold out notices against the upcoming tour are anything to go by.
It sees Mike team with co-producer Chris Vellejo once more and continue to record in Australia and New Zealand. The sound this time is fuller, smoother and more polished; the instrumentation lush and tightly scripted, the arrangements big and bold and buoyed by the swell of string and cascading runs of piano. Mike’s voice is still delicate and vulnerable, yet he carries the keening melodies well and his impressive tunefulness, amply demonstrating Let Her Go to be no fluke.
Passenger brings to mind Cat Stevens, and perhaps it’s the stylised delivery or phrasing that sounds that particular chord. Anyway, it seems Mike has drunk deep from a bygone era of classic singer songwriters for inspiration as much as he has absorbed the lessons of his contemporaries and peers. It could be, however, that such thinking simply betrays an older set of ears (mine) rather than young talent (Mike’s). Tellingly, if the album grates, it’s when the words get too clipped in that youth-speak style. Equally he sometimes clings too closely to the coastline of the easy rhyme, although to those fed a steady diet of the Cold Porridge of vacuous choons, he may well appear a laureate in the making.
All that said, his words certainly appear heartfelt and therein perhaps is his gift. It seems Young As The Morning Old As The Sea is an apt title that tells a story, fleshed out through these songs, of a young man who is both of those things and neither all at the same time. In some ways Mike seems to be trying to reassert himself in the world. A Passenger once able to drift easy, his back story suggest one for whom “I can gather all the news I need from the weather report,” became a modus operandi. Now perhaps the gaze from the window is a little more anxious, the road less surefooted, the journey at someone else’s behest.
The opener Everything sets the scene as Mike wrestles with the balance of getting everything you want. It comes at a cost, because all of a sudden you have something to lose. If You Go and When We Were Young both play with ideas of freedom, the simple pleasures of being carefree and travelling at will. These themes return again and again and the title track finds Mike dreaming of his favourite places before declaring, “I wanna be free as the wind that blows past me.” Beautiful Birds and Fools Gold crave some of the lost innocence of youth. Finally Home finds him questioning, “They say home is where the heart is, but my heart is wild and free, so am I homeless or just heartless, did I start this, did it start me?”
His blogs suggest that Mike is genuinely thrilled and humbled by his success, but you suspect there is always a “plan b”. The way these songs easily strip back to solo acoustic versions offers a far simpler way ahead. Perhaps this album is Mike dropping some of the baggage he’s acquired and embarking on a new journey towards peace of mind. I can only wish him, “bon voyage.”
Author: Simon, London Bridge store
