Passenger @ The Gaelic Hotel,Sydney (11/11/11)

Mon 14th Nov, 2011 in Gig Reviews

As the crowd began the line up the atmosphere was electric, Passenger’s fans have done a wonderful job of spreading the word of the magic man that we were all about to see.
Mike Rosenberg’s solo tour was highly anticipated and has five sold out shows in his capital city tour of Australia mostly from word of mouth which is a great achievement.

The venue was about half full for the energetic Jess Chalker who had the duty of warming up the crowd. She is a great singer songwriter with a soft voice, good guitar work and a wonderful cover of Black and Gold to which the crowd joined in. She couldn’t hide her excitement either and decided to take a photo for her followers on Facebook.

Stu Larson has been involved with Passenger in many ways throughout different tours his roles are diverse as tour manager to Passenger’s backing band but this tour he has the role of support act. The shaggy blonde with the train drivers hat knew his way around a guitar. He decided to share his song Cocoon with the awaiting crowd as he explained that he wrote this in a cottage in Adelaide. A crowd member let slip it was Stu Larson’s birthday as he confirmed to the outspoken crowd member that it was a birthday song from the crowd was blasted out from everybody in the crowd at the top of their lungs.

Stu then spoilt the crowd with a touch of Japan, a multi-instrumentist that Stu met while touring Japan. The man small in stature can play a harmonica like his life depended on it, also played the xylophone with amazing skill. The pair played Stu’s song This Train and Stu’s guest had the crowd pumping for his beat boxing harmonica impersonation of a train. The crowd were crazy about Stu and his guest.

Passenger was confident as he came and played his song Fairy Tails and Firesides before addressing the loving crowd which was hanging off his every word. Before he went on he tried to warn people that his set might not be the happiest hour of their life before performing a joke song entitled The Rain. The crowd was silent as a mouse, after his joke song he then thought it would be nice to be unplugged and impressed the crowd with his loud and personal version of I See Love. He then warned this song might be bad as he was splashing into new territory with what he described as ‘white reggae’ with a new song called The Wrong Direction which has the crowd bopping as he faded the song into the classic What Is Love.

Passenger then played one of the crowd favourite’s Simon And Garfunkel’s classic The Sound Of Silence which had the crowd in awe of his talents. He continued his flow of beautiful music with a new song from his album for release in February called Rolling Stones about his life at the cross roads, then had his song Caravan to keep the crowd wanting more.

To lift the mood he had a massive help out from the crowd with his YouTube hit I Hate which had everybody laughing and singing along. Mike then asked the birthday boy Stu to come and share the stage as they sung Hearts on Fire. Then played his oldest song of his set with a sad song _Table_before blasting out some old favourites – Golden Thread and a singalong of Holes. Passengers encore consisted of the wonderful The Last Unicorn and shared a special first time live performance of a new song 27 which had the crowd in an extremely happy mood.

Passenger is a performer that you must catch – smart, funny and best of all he can play a beautiful song.