Album Review: Passenger - Runaway

You can't accuse Mike Rosenberg of being a pretender.

By the time he accidentally (yet deservedly) reached a massive global audience with 2012 single Let Her Go, he'd already spent years busking around the world, particularly falling in love with Australia and becoming chummy and collab-y with the Katie Noonan, Boy & Bear and Josh Pyke crowd. So whilst his tenth album as Passenger was recorded in studios both here and in England, Runaway sounds like he's hitchhiking through the US, reflecting on lost loves and harsh political times whilst embracing a love of Radio Americana.

But that fork in Passenger's road is where things get a bit dusty. An over-enthusiasm for the lap steel guitar doesn't really fit as well with his gorgeously feline vocals as one might hope. Why Can't I Change and Let's Go are as softly personal as Rosenberg gets but the Ryan Adams-isms can certainly be distracting. In fact, the front half is so loaded with his new favourite toy that it totally takes you out of the Passenger experience. Yet when Ghost Town strips it all right down for a tale about the death of the Detroit motor industry, he's at his most affecting.