An Evening With Passenger
"Now we’ve got holes in our hearts. Yeah, we’ve got holes in our lives. Well, we’ve got holes. We’ve got holes, but we carry on." Passenger
Passenger accidentally became the soundtrack to the first half of my year, this year of our lord 2024. His song “Let Her Go” was the gateway drug and Spotify was the dealer that added a bunch of his other songs to the algorithmic playlists it made for me. And, as a consequence, in a moment of madness, I bought two tickets to see him in Galway in the Big Top tent in Fisheries Field down by the Cathedral. I say “him” and not “them” as he is a solo artist that goes by the name Passenger as opposed to his real name, which is Michael David Rosenberg.
I’ve never felt sure how to comport myself at a concert, so in the past would have been inclined to chuck down half a dozen beers so as to see if that would make the situation, and how one is supposed to act, clearer, but it never really did. If anything, it just made everything more blurry and forgetful.
Having bought the tickets, I sought advice on how to enjoy a gig without alcohol. My brother informed me that you don’t have to do anything, that you can just sit there and enjoy the music. The woman in the local shop informed me that I could “boogie woogie”, which I didn’t really like the sound of at all. Another woman advised that the thing to do was just to “enjoy the vibes”, which sounded laudable but I’m not sure what “vibes” are or how to “enjoy” them. And then came the problem of finding someone to go with.
A couple of people I fancied I might ask to accompany me informed me that they didn’t “know why anyone would bother their heads going to concerts” and at that I realised there was no point asking them. I thought about asking a couple of people to go with me who either didn’t know who Passenger is or didn’t like him anyway, and so I didn’t bother asking them and ended up a bit like the skeleton that didn’t go to the disco because he had no body to go with. In the end, I collared my young lad as my plus one.
We arrived at the concert venue at 7pm on the dot, which is when the gates opened. There’s a massive queue and I can’t stand queuing and so walk up the road to Supermacs for some chips, and arrive back at 8pm, by which time the queue is magically gone. Note to self: always arrive to concerts at least one hour late, or even two if the support act is of no interest.
Vendors for t-shirts, burgers, beer, and coffee are all along in a row to the left, with the Heineken beer tent being the biggest vendor of all. People are drinking beer out of transparent plastic cups and spirits out of paper cups with rainbow stripes. To the right is the big blue tent under which the stage is setup, which is a reassuring protection from the possibility of rain. It doesn’t seem like it will rain though and it’s actually quite warm, and at 18 degrees in a thin green jumper and jeans, I’m feeling rather hot and overdressed.
Before long the support act comes on the stage. They’re a band called Amistat and they explain that they are brothers and that and that 10 years ago they had a dream that one day they would play with Passenger and now they were which was proof that dreams can, in fact, come true. They played a few easy listening songs I didn’t know and also a bit of Lord Huron’s “The night we met” which funnily enough has been one of the songs Spotify has been impregnating my brain with for the past few months. They also played a song that they apparently wrote for a friend back home in Australia that they said has mental health problems. After a handful of songs they thank the audience and what not and I go off and buy a couple of 7ups for myself and the young lad. I don’t usually drink such high sugar beverages anymore, but I’m at a concert, and so I decide to go wild.
I can feel a slight giddiness from the 7up sugar rush and so am nicely primed when the main act comes on the stage. For some reason he has to explain to the audience that there is no band and that it’s just him playing his guitar and singing. He tells a little story about the not-too-distant past where he was an unknown and would sometimes play gigs to disinterested audiences of as few as twelve. Apparently, his most famous song, “Let Her Go”, launched his career into orbit and he joked that he thought a lot of the audience likely only knew that one song and would be happy if he played it over and over and nothing else for the set. It’s a good song, and has literally billions of plays online; I actually wouldn’t have minded if he played it a few times.
Life is funny, if he hadn’t had that one song that launched him to fame, then in all probability most of the people that paid to see him tonight wouldn’t even notice him if they passed him in the street, nor even notice him as anything more than background music in an average pub. But here he is, with a couple of thousand people out to see him on a Monday night at the Big Top in Galway.
He plays a few songs I am mildly familiar with, like “All the Little Lights” which is a nice little song about the nice little things (lights) that make life worthwhile that one-by-one disappear (go out). He then goes on to play a newish song he wrote during lockdown called “Queenstown”, which he says was about a relationship breakup he had around that time. He asks the audience to be quiet for it and says it might make “us” cry; I didn’t notice anybody crying though to be honest.
When he was playing it, I got to thinking about an interview I saw with Dolores O’Riordan (Cranberries) and how she said that once she achieved global fame with “Zombie” that she never felt so lonely in her whole life and would often ring home, when touring, to talk to her parents. Even though Passenger is up on stage and has “success” and fame, I thought that he could easily be the loneliest guy at the concert.
After about an hour, he plays his most famous song “Let Her Go”, which signals the end of the show which felt like it went by quite quickly considering I didn’t get intoxicated outside of a mild sugar buzz. At various points in the song he moves away from the microphone, prompting the audience to sing along to fill the gaps. At the end of it he says Galway had the best sing along of any audience he’s ever played to, and I wonder if he says that to all the audiences he plays to. He then leaves the stage and says goodnight, but everyone knows he’ll be back in a minute or two.
A few minutes later, he comes back out and says he’ll play a few more. He plays around three and finishes with a song called “Holes” which is about having the endurance to “carry on” in spite of all the things everyone feels are missing in their respective lives. During this song I notice two young women and a much older gray haired man in front of me. The girls wave their hands in the air along with the song, and then one of them goes behind him and gives him a cuddle for a few seconds and I think she’s likely his daughter and that she is comforting him on account of whatever “hole” they both feel to be missing from their lives.
And then that really is the end of the show and the herds of people make their way to the exit. The venue was full of thousands of strangers that mostly didn’t even know each other and yet we somehow all felt compelled to pay and go and stand in a field and look at some other stranger up on a stage; a singer of songs, a peddler of dreams; an artist who for some reason resonates with the inner privacy of our subjective souls. But now the dream is over, and we all trundle back to our subjective realities. The spell is broken, and we are no longer a hive mind collectively wallowing in the individual dreams that Passengers’ music for some reason resonates with. Though for some people, like my son, the music doesn’t resonate at all; he’s just here to keep his daft old dad company for the duration.
:)