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Singer-songwriter Mike Rosenberg and Andrew Phillips met by chance in 2002 backstage at a Free Burma benefit gig and immediately hit it off. They got on so well in fact that just a year later they formed Passenger, Brighton’s hottest new musical export. And with their debut album all set for release, they’re already attracting widespread attention and interest. Mike picks up the story:
“I was only seventeen and up until that point had just played a bit around Brighton but that gig was a real leap up. I met Andrew backstage, it was great to meet professional musicians and hang out with them for one of the first times and we just hit it off musically and socially. It happened pretty organically. To start with it was just me and Andrew just working off my set of songs and as the relationship built up we started writing together, then started getting the band together”
As well as Alon Cohen on drums, the pair recruited Marcus O’Dair (bass) and Richard Brincklow (keyboards) who had previously collaborated with each other in a DJ Shadow covers band. A strange musical slant to bring to a predominantly acoustic catalogue of songs, but one that both Mike and Andrew (the bands driving force) were keen to embrace and absorb and it shows in their subtly electronic laced folk rock as Andrew explains:
“A lot of my ideas and a lot of Mike’s ideas were to get some beats into it and make it more electronic, the idea was to take it somewhere else to make it experimental. So over time we worked that into it and became more confident writing towards those kinds of sounds”
Just one of the latest flux of bands to explode out of the Brighton scene, the pair are in no doubt that their London-by-the-sea residency has helped mould and challenge their dynamic sound:
“The bar is really high in Brighton because there’re so many bands and not that many venues” Says Mike.
Andrew agrees:
“It stops you being in a bubble, it stops you thinking you’re great in some little place then going to a bigger place and thinking… we’re not actually as good as we thought we were”
Mike may have been new to the music industry when the pair first met but Andrew was anything but. A successful film and television soundtrack composer with over ten years experience, Andrew has several awards and BAFTA nominations to his credit and isn’t quite ready to give up his other musical interests just yet:
“I’m running that in parallel, I’m working on something at the moment, a BBC1 film, I suppose I cherry pick the projects I really want to work on and I think that will feed back positively into what we do”
But he’s keen not to let his valuable knowledge overshadow the bands organic creativity:
“I think that’s something you’ve got to be really careful about. Sometimes it can be a help but I think sometimes you just have to button your lip. We both come up with ideas, its not just like we write a song and then I take the whole thing away and work on it in my tower, it’s a very open process of how we make the records”
With their new single ‘Do What You Like’ out on July 2nd and their debut album ‘Wicked Mans Rest’ due to hit the shelves in September, the writing process has been a labour of love for Passenger. But with the album now complete, it’s something that the band are collectively proud of, as Mike explains:
“We had our first draft ready about a year ago and we’ve been taking songs off, putting songs on ever since then up until two or three months ago. But I think it tries to represent our musical journey over the last couple of years”
Andrew continues:
“I hope it represents the musical personalities involved. There’s a lot of energy and a lot of subtlety but also a lot of muscle and excitement and adrenaline. There’s a lot of contrast in what we do and we’re proud of the variation within it. It’s very layered and there’s a lot in the lyrics, there’s a lot in the music, in the arrangements and I think it’s an album that you can go back to and discover more and that’s what we wanted, to make an appealing but quite complex and sophisticated record”
Visibly excited, he goes on:
“We’re really excited about it we can’t wait to get going and that’s across the whole band, everyone’s excited and flexing their muscles a bit. We’ve worked through our early 70’s obsession with James Taylor, The Band, Van Morrison… now its 2007 and we’ve brought in a cinematic electronica feel but stayed with a warm interesting lyrical core to it. We’re more confident to challenge that harder sound”
In order to promote the forthcoming releases the band have just finished a gruelling nationwide touring schedule and are currently taking a well deserved, albeit short, break. But keen to gauge the level of their songs at their most basic level, the band decided to incorporate busking into the touring process. Mike explains:
“Before this recent tour we did a lot of busking around the country and it’s really interesting, you realise you can just set up in the street and people who aren’t necessarily part of the gig going public are interested enough to stand around and have a listen”
Andrew picks up the story:
“The busking thing was fascinating because you strip everything away, there’s no keyboards, no massive drums and yet the same songs get to people and it’s really nice to have that confidence that you know your core appeals to people. We enjoyed it a lot more than we thought we would actually, you sort of tip up with a carpet, put it down on the pavement and you own the space, it suddenly becomes a stage”
It’s early days yet but full of unbridled confidence and determination, Passenger are already looking to the future and aren’t just going along for the ride:
“Ultimately we want to make a second album” Says Mike “That’s the bottom line. And hopefully connect with a few people on the way. The albums not out yet, but already people seem to connect with it on a personal level. We’re about writing songs and playing music and its really not image led. (He points and laughs at Andy) Either the music stands up for itself or it doesn’t and that’s how we’ve always looked at music”
