Enmore Theatre, Sydney
Thursday February 25, 2016 :
In the already packed Enmore Theatre, Luke Thompson, with a soulful voice smoother than Kraft peanut butter, was warming up the stage. “There’s too many of you, some of you can leave,” he joked nervously, as he looked down at the swarm of people already edging their way closer to the barricade. The NZ local then told the crowd how he was soon to be moving to Sydney to travel around in a caravan with his family. Everyone loved this news, and crowd erupted into cheers. Quick as a whip, he threw himself into the next song saying, “sing along if you catch on fast,” and the crowd took him up on that, screaming the lines they knew quite, quite loud. His set was compiled with a few older songs, but a lot from his release, To The Common Dark, such as ‘Green Green Grass,’ a hearty and soulful tune about getting old that appeared to quiet the crowd a little as they all seemed to be pondering about life in time with this tune. After playing ‘Walls’, and strumming at almost Mumford speed, I heard a random Welsh girl near me in a somewhat thick accent said ‘Yeah, I’m really loving this guy,’ quite a matter of factly, and I think based on the cheers and amount of audience participation, the majority of this crowd was in agreement. Thompson finished up his set with a favourite, ‘Slow Boat To China,’ asking first for people (‘not all of you, just some of you’) to come to his upcoming tour. Written primarily as an attempt at a kids song, ‘Slow Boat to China’ was a beautiful and calm acoustic song, and the audience appeared to either already know it, or still be sober enough to catch on lighting fast, because as the bearded Kiwi ended his set, the voices of the crowd filling the Enmore Theatre all sang along with him in unison.
Strolling next on to the stage, and filling with quirk and beauty was All Our Exes Live In Texas. Elana Stone leading the quartet in quirk with her beautiful and bulky accordion that caused warm notes and folk vibes to bounce off the walls of the Enmore Theatre. One of them complaining that Luke Thompson had left her guitar out of tune after he had borrowed it. Their set was filled with quirky, fun, and folky tunes, and beautiful four part harmonies echoing through the crowds ears. Treating those who came out early with a fun newly written song, that contains ‘cool drums, but we’re poor so we don’t have a band so you’ll just have to imagine them. They go a little like ‘boo doo bee doo’. Further into the set, they made everyone in the thousand strong crowd think they’d literally been teleported to an old hoedown, everyone boogieing along and lapping up the vibe. These guys, as the young kids would say, were tight. A mandolin made numerous appearances, as did the classic campfire instrument, a wooden ukulele. After playing a new, never before performed and currently unnamed song, they asked the crowd for help in naming it (my suggestion is ‘Childhood Home’ if anyone’s paying attention), and, once the crowd screamed out some suggestions and the odd, loud ‘I LOVE YOU’ they began to wrap up their pitch perfect and mega-folky set. ‘We have been All Our Exes Live In Texas, but they don’t, they all live in Newtown and they’re probably all here‘, they joked before ending with a really sweet tune ‘You’re Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone’, they exited the stage, and we certainly missed them.
But then it was time for the man everyone had been waiting for. Mike Rosenberg, aka Passenger, strolled on to stage with guitar in hand and the theatre ERUPTED. Loud as the cheers and whistles were, nothing could be louder than the look of pure joy that was plastered on Mike’s face. The joy ceased to disappear as he opened his set with his oldie ‘Fairytales and Firesides’. The crowd pushed forward and swayed in time, and before he launched into a song from his ‘All The Little Lights’ release, he paused to introduce himself to his sea of fans, and tell them how much he fucking loved Sydney by saying ‘I fucking love you Sydney’ at least four times. The crowd threw themselves into ‘Life’s For The Living’ and sang along as loudly as their lungs would allow. In true Passenger form, the stand outs from his performance were his quips, tales, and quick thinking banter. He opened his comedic set with a story about a gig he played overseas in a bar where everyone, akin to tonight, sang along to ‘Life’s for the Living’, everyone, except for this one guy that screamed out just one word from the song; storage. The crowd responded by either laughing, or screaming out ‘storage’ loudly. Mike then pulled the mood of the room down slightly to tell the tale of his stay in an awful Euro hostel, and his daily interaction with a man who loved to tell his life story to him everyday. This mans name was David, and so Mike launched into ‘David’, a deep song from his most recent release; Whispers II (real fucking original Mike.) With a seamless transition, the charismatic Brit introduced Sydney to a new song titled ‘Young as the Morning’. Everyone then screamed out song requests, and many screamed out things like ‘I love you Mike!’ and ‘You’re Beautiful.’ Mike responded quick smart to that with ‘I don’t play James Blunt songs.’ After playing the chorus to ‘You’re Beautiful’, Mike left his improv comedy set and returned to the one he had originally planned.
I’ve never heard a 1000+ strong crowd be as silent as they were for the next song on the set. Without being too cliché, you could have heard a pin drop. Pretty fitting, as the song was Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Sound of Silence’. Stepping away from the mic, he belted out the lyrics with great gusto and passion. Strumming as loud and fast as his wrists would allow, and stomping loud enough for it to echo through the floor, Mike threw himself into this song, and it was if the crowd had melted away. The passionate lil’ busker from Brighton then played a crowd favourite, and as he tried to introduce it in true Mike fashion, the screams of the excited crowd became almost too much. ‘Artists try to spread love, and peace, and I think hate gets overlooked‘, he chuckled. After teaching the crowd how exactly to sing along, he, joined with a thousand voices, launched enthusiastically into ‘I Hate.’ He paused momentarily mid song that if they did not sing along, they were all racists, like Donald Trump. This received quite the response from his enthralled audience. Apparently Sydney hates Trump. Go Sydney. When this classic and widely known song arrived at its end, Mike introduced Sydney to his second new song of the set; a song titled ‘Beautiful Birds’ that fans were ecstatic to hear was being recorded at local Leichhardt studio, Linear, and that Mike had been living in Sydney for the past three months. But they were more estactic to hear the next song. The song the world was presented that forced them to fall in love with this raspy voiced Brit that wears his heart on his sleeve. Almost every single man, woman, and child, belted out the lyrics to ‘Let Her Go, and I got goosebumps for the second time that night. I was in the crowd the first time ‘Let Her Go’ had been played, and now, it felt as if the whole world had been as captivated as I was. Mike joked about being a ‘one hit wonder’, as having only one hit single, ‘it’s a joke, but it’s a fact,’ he chuckled. He then played ‘Travelling Alone’ after explaining the sad tale behind it.
In the intro to the next song, Mike explained a little about his background and about the steps he had taken to get here. He busked on almost every street corner on the globe, and when busking he ‘had no money, or clothes, or teeth. There were times when I felt like giving up’ he said, ‘times when I wondered if it was worth it. And if you’ve ever felt like that, this song’s for you.’ He launched into ‘27’, a song he had written on tour with Aussie Josh Pyke. Everyone in the crowd that night could see, that there was something extraordinary about this man. A Passenger gig isn’t for hipsters. It isn’t for those who’ll spend the whole time looking at him through their phone. It’s for dreamers. It’s for those who can hear his lyrics as more than words on page. It’s for those that can hear the words he screams, and feel the passion on every strum as he pours everything that’s inside of him into his music. In ‘27’, you can feel his anguish and his struggle and you can feel the weight of every step he’s taken to be standing on this very stage in front of all these people. Everyone in his audience stood with him, and clapped along and tried to keep pace.
Mike then invited his friends we met earlier in the night to help his sing his oldie (but a real goodie) song ‘Caravan’. Luke Thompson bought a real smoothness to this song, like honey or molasses, and the girls from All Our Exes Live in Texas accompanied with pitch perfect harmonies. Cue the goosebumps again. And then it was time for the last song, ‘Scare Away The Dark’; a song all about how ‘we’re all slowly dying in front of fucking computers’, about singing loud, and swimming in seas and loving without fear. The crowd all stood up from their seats and sang along with Mike, and screamed out the ostinato that ends the song loudly along with them. And even when the stage was dark, and he had walked away, the crowd belted out that same ostinato for as long as it took to bring Mike back to sing along with them. As the sea of voices merged into one, Mike flew back out to the microphone and now sang along with the crowd he had created. Before launching into his encore, Mike said that this was ‘the best Sydney gig’ he had ever played. After ‘Things That Stop You Dreaming’, another crowd favourite, Mike ended his best Sydney gig with ‘Holes.’ So much flipping crowd participation. There was something about this small, bearded British man in tight jeans that had enchanted every soul in this whole crowd. A man that sings from the heart that he wears on his sleeve and gives you a glimpse at the things he’s seen in the music he writes. Sydney was honoured to have you, Mike.
Reviewer and Photographer: Bobby Hendry
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