Reviewed onThursday February 25
The Enmore Theatre is a flexible venue. It’s been privy to a smorgasbord of different sounds, and on Thursday night it might just have reached its peak amount of feels when Passenger took it over for the night.
Michael Rosenberg AKA Passenger had his work cut out for him when he chose All Our Exes Live In Texas to warm the crowd. These four impeccably dressed, supremely talented performers captivated from the start to the finish of their short but definitely sweet set. With an engaging air of self-deprecating humour they ran through tracks like the catchy ‘Tell Me’, a song that made us feel a little strange for the enthusiasm with which we sung lines like “Tell me you don’t love me anymore”, and the incredible harmony-laden cover of The White Stripes’ ‘Hotel Yorba’. Despite all the jokes and incredibly off-kilter stage banter you couldn’t deny these were incredibly clever women talking to each other on an equal level in a way the crowd lapped up. Subtlety is an art form and when you realised there were no drums, just all acoustic instruments, the power of song finally began to break through.
If we’re talking the power of song, the cake really must go to Passenger, a talented, eccentric, witty and disarmingly honest showman who played with the crowd like the willing putty we were. Stating upfront that tonight was just him and an acoustic guitar, Rosenberg followed with two hours of storytelling in every sense of the word. As he enthralled us with tales of ‘David’, a 50-something hostel visitor, or the combined heartbreaking stories of a widowed but strong Gold Coast man in Copenhagen and the disenchanted lady met outside a hotel in ‘Travelling Alone’, it was clear that a pin could have been heard dropping among the audience. Everyone was here to listen to what was to be said, and Passenger repaid it in kind.
From crowd favourites ‘Things That Stop You Dreaming’, ‘Life’s For The Living’ and ‘27’ to a unique cover of ‘The Sound Of Silence’ and his self-confessed one and only hit single ‘Let Her Go’, Rosenberg truly laid it all bare and showed what it was to truly deserve an encore. This was a larger-than-life night that felt like it restored faith in the power of a song, with a human who had a story to tell, right at a time when many need it most.
