One Movement Snippets -Passenger

Sun 18th Oct, 2009 in Gig Reviews

When you think of the Belgian Beer Café the first thing that comes to mind wouldn’t be supporting great original artists, it’s more of your early to mid twenty year old boys, getting drunk and possibly fighting kind of place. But tucked away behind it is a lovely little beer garden that was a perfect place for UK artist, Passenger, to serenade us. There is some confusion as to whether he’s the whole band, or just part of one, he introduced himself as “Mike from Passenger”, so it seems the band could maybe only afford to send one person over for the showcase festival.

But seriously, I’m not sure if having anyone else on that stage would have improved the sound one iota. One man, with an acoustic guitar belting out simple, honest lyrics like “We’re banging our heads against the wall; it’s a painful way to get attention” definitely would have struck a chord with struggling new bands and lovers alike. The music behind the lyrics was also simple, with no fanfare to take away from what he was singing, with beautiful, contemplative melodies between versus without any kind of guitar wankery to spoil the purity of the moment. He’s playing again on Sunday at the Festival and I for one will be checking him out again.