Album Review: Passenger – Whispers

Staying firmly in safe and comfortable territory Passenger releases an aptly titled album ‘Whispers’ which, true to its melancholy folk-pop style, delights in the stories of individual characters while meditating on the bigger themes of love, death, and growing up.  Accompanied by nifty guitar melodies and string accompaniments the lyrics that are rough around the edges still charm. Rather than seeking to bolster commercial appeal with amped up production, (something close friend Ed Sheeran may be guilty of) – in the wake of near chart-topper ‘Let Her Go’, Passenger is comfortable with his outsider status, true to the music he wants to write.

His honesty shines through in the autobiographical up-tempo ‘27’ (containing the embedded ethos of ‘I don’t give a fuck if they get to the chart). Throughout each verse he hardly pauses for breath, a style epitomised in the lyric: ‘I don’t know where I’m running but I know how to run / cause running’s the thing I’ve always done’. The bridge is particularly effective as with sparse accompaniment he delivers a lyrical, often critical, summation of his journey thus far.

‘Bullets’ and ‘Riding to New York’ tell the stories of individual characters – the latter is the poignant tale of a dying man riding a bike to New York to see his family one last time. A soft beat echoes throughout behind a deeply meditative guitar accompaniment. ‘Bullets’ is musically more upbeat (complete with harmonica) and is the tale of a man who collects bullets, which have become the only constant left in his life and how he copes when most are taken from him. ‘Thunder’ is an antidote to some of the more sobering themes on the album, mainly because of the line ‘I go running in circles / like baby turtles / down to the sea’ (baby turtles!). The samba-style accompaniment makes for compulsive listening and adds overall variety (considerably more instrumental layers than the previous album).

‘Scare Away the Dark’ certainly leaves a lasting impression as the final track on the album. The nice melody betrays the underlying lyrical resentment at modern society (we ‘drink ourselves stupid / and work ourselves dead / and all just because that’s what mom and dad said we should do’). Instead, Passenger sweetly croons, we should ‘run through the forest’, stare at the stars instead of screens and live in the joy of the moment. He even throws in the line ‘we want something real not just hash tags and Twitter’ while bemoaning how we’re ‘all slowly dying in front of computers’. After a repeated chorus of ‘oohs’ the final message dissolves into the characteristically saccharine: ‘if we all light up we can scare away the dark’. The sentiment is sweet and simple, told in Passenger’s riddles and rhymes it echoes nicely but without penetration.

Passenger’s unusual voice cements his individuality in a musical genre which is enjoying a resurgence but also a period of commercialisation. His songwriting style is not dissimilar to Sheeran’s but if anything he practices it with more integrity and ventures into it as an art form in his weaving of rhymes, facts and fictions. With this album Passenger has resisted the urge to build on the chart storming of ‘Let Her Go’ in any contrived way, instead preferring to whisper in his sweet and husky tones of the sweet and simple stories that carry increased resonance the more you listen to them. Listening to this album is a process of getting acquainted, growing into familiarity and enjoying a period of respite though, for all his earnestness, not one of revelation.