Enmore Theatre, Sydney
Sunday November 18, 2018 :
In January 2012, Brighton-born singer songwriter Mike Rosenberg was touring our nation playing quaint and cosy venues up and down the East Coast under his moniker, Passenger. His third long player, recorded in Sydney with help from a string of Aussie artists, had been out for a year or so and had achieved ARIA gold status, undoubtedly a big moment for a performer who’d cut his teeth busking on high streets and hadn’t experienced success in the charts before this point.
It was on this tour that Rosenberg’s fortunes would dramatically change. While backstage at Lizotte’s in Newcastle, messing around on his guitar before his set, he’d pen a song that would catapult him into the spotlight and take him from playing rooms that could hold a few hundred, to stadiums that held tens of thousands.
Rosenberg’s world post ‘Let Her Go’ may be different, but one thing that doesn’t seem to have changed is his affinity with Australia. The lad is certainly no stranger to our shores and no stranger to the Enmore Theatre either, where he played to a sold-out crowd on Sunday night.
In town off the back of his freshly released tenth record, Runaway, Rosenberg was full of fist pumps and enthusiasm as he took to the Enmore stage for what would be a night of fan favourites (‘Holes’, ‘I Hate’, ‘Hell or High Water’ and of, course his aforementioned mega hit) plus a few surprises.
As a Passenger first-timer, admittedly not all too familiar with his work outside his “one and only hit single” as he’ll happily call it, the first big surprise comes pretty well immediately. The dude is alone. And not an “Oh, I didn’t realise Passenger was just one guy” kind of alone. The kind of alone that you only really see with street performers or at your local open mic. This isn’t a singer songwriter who tours with a band. This isn’t even a singer songwriter who plays with a loop pedal. It’s just Rosenberg and his guitar. Opening with an oldie, ‘Fairytales and Firesides’ off 2010’s Divers and Submarines and ‘David’ off Whispers II from 2015, both with their fast finger-picky guitar, I figured this was going to be a subdued folk affair. Plenty of quiet moments, placing Rosenberg’s skilled lyricism into full view.
But then, in a moment and as he would continue to do again and again throughout the night, Rosenberg turned the energy around on a dime, and therein lies his true, and remarkable, talent as a performer. One minute he has the room so quiet you can literally hear a dropped cup hit the carpet, the next the crowd is swelling and punters are screaming their hearts out to affirming anthems like, ‘Life’s for the Living’ or ‘Scare Away the Dark’. This is a man that can control a crowd like nobody’s business.
At no point in the show was this skill better exemplified than when, in another surprising moment, he trotted out a cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘The Sound of Silence’, one of Rosenberg’s favourite tracks, and he definitely does it justice. Reserved at first, with a slowed tempo and whisper quiet guitar, he built this folk classic to a fever pitch of wild strumming and shouts, before effortlessly resolving back into quiet calm, fans entranced the entire time. A really magic moment. This would be one of two covers in the 12-track set, the other, a rendition of ‘Dancing in the Dark’, kicking off the encore later in the night.
If his enviable ability to command a room or the intensity of his performance, that of a full band, isn’t enough for you to have a bloody great time at a Passenger gig, then his charm should definitely do it for you. His between-songs banter was on point, cracking jokes at his own expense, generously sharing the sometimes deeply personal stories behind his songs, and full of appreciation for the crowd.
From start to finish Passenger was an absolute delight, and if history tells us anything, if you missed him this time around you probably won’t need to wait too long before he’s back winning more Australian hearts.
Reviewer : Amelia Parrott
Photographer : Sean O’Reilly
