The music blogosphere be damned, British music duo Passenger are just too good to be boxed in as a more versatile James Blunt or David Grey-esque, or reminiscent of The Police on ‘I’ll Be Watching You.’ They are nothing more and nothing less than themselves, a duo consisting of Andrew Phillips and Mike Rosenberg, two guys who met at a charity gig in Brighton six years ago and discovered they had a knack for juxtaposing poppy rifts, moving scores and dark, unsettling lyrics.
‘I bring the lyrics and melodic ideas,’ says Rosenberg. ‘Andrew has worked in film and documentary soundtracks – musically, he is just really brilliant. Together we test each other and raise each other’s game a bit. After working with someone for so long, you know if it’s not their best work, so you can say it. Whereas if you are on your own you may compromise or settle for something that’s not up there. I think it’s a good songwriting partnership – almost like a relationship because it is so personal what you are doing, baring your soul to each other really.’
Wicked Man’s Rest, an album that is the first fruits borne out of the relationship, is a testament to the duo’s talents, which have that rare ability to make listeners want to dance and cry to the same song.
‘When you sing sad songs the most powerful thing you can do is make someone laugh halfway through. It’s that moment where someone tells you some terrible news and all you want to do is laugh… That ability to make someone cry and laugh in the same song is just such a powerful tool, and that’s what we are going for really,’ says Rosenberg.
The title track starts the album, and is a perfect showcase for the respective lyricism of Rosenberg and arrangement mastery of Phillips. For Rosenberg the song is about ‘when you can’t sleep and you’ve just got a million thoughts running through your head. It’s that stream of consciousness really and it’s quite unsettling and claustrophic singing that song.’
Those lyrics are augmented by the arrangement, which samples a reading by Allen Ginsberg of his poem ‘A Supermarket in California’ – an idea, says Rosenberg, ‘plucked from Andrew’s brilliant and slightly insane brain that works because the poem is about consumerism and the weird feeling of being in a supermarket.’
Rosenberg also names ‘Table for One’ as a standout track. Like most of the album, the song draws relies on the contradiction between upbeat arrangement and dark lyrics to create a postmodern ditty that deconstructs the everyday experiences of ordinary people in the most unsettling of ways.
‘Table for One was interesting – we had just played a gig up in London, an acoustic gig, and we were in a pub in London, one of those pubs you go into and there’s not a woman in the place, just men by themselves staring off into the middle distance and trying to figure out their lives,’ Rosenberg says, setting the scene. ‘We started talking about how depressing it was. The next day when we went to mix all the equipment in the studio wasn’t working. We had our guitars with us, so we sat down and started playing and the song just happened in under an hour – it all just fell out. It was on the tip of our tongues really.’
As for the rest of the album, it’s out February 7 on Chalkmark / IE through Inertia and well worth a listen.
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Take it or Leave it?
With so many comparisons being bantered about, we asked Passenger’s Mike Rosenberg, which he would take and which he would leave to someone else.
James Blunt? Leave that.
The Strokes? Take that – I don’t necessarily agree, but I like it.
David Grey? Yeah, I can see that.
The Magic Numbers? No, they are a good band, but I don’t think we have anything in common.
Morrissey? Yeah, I can see Morrissey. I just whinge an awful lot and I think he does that quite well.
The Police? I guess because we have written a song about stalking. I love the Police – I’ll take it.
Rihanna (okay, we made this one up, but they do a stunning cover of Rihanna’s ‘Umbrella’)? Visually, we look very similar. I’ve grown a beard just so people can tell us apart because it just got awkward, we would be out at the Grammys, or wherever we would be, and everyone would run up to me, ‘Rihanna, Rihanna’ – it just got a bit awkward, we had this big argument, it was just a nightmare.
