Runaway

Brand new sealed album from NZs Passenger housed in a gatefold cover.

I haven't listened to Passenger since 2012 when Let Her Go was one of the biggest hits on the airwaves.

Six years later, Passenger - aka Michael Rosenberg - has barely changed. This is not a good thing.

Rosenberg seems to have found a sound and formula that worked and stuck to it like superglue, and while there's definitely something to be said for staying in your lane and capitalising on your wheelhouse, it's just plain boring.

There's all the cinematic strings and folk guitar you'd expect, and of course, Rosenberg's distinctive vocals (which also have not changed). The only difference here is that Rosenberg has leaned into Americana, employing the banjo and mandolin, and really going to town with the ol' slide guitar.

The album was dreamed up as a kind of soundtrack to the great American roadtrip and the accompanying video clips were shot during a three-week jaunt across the US.

And to Rosenberg's credit, that's exactly how it sounds. You can easily imagine these songs soundtracking a sun-soaked montage in a roadtrip flick, which is all well and good until you have ten of them back to back.

Then there are the cheesy lyrics like "If life is a journey / love is a signpost / freedom's a fork in the road", "love like you mean it / be free as the river that flows" and "He leaves an ice cube in your heart and a snowflake in your soul".

Rosenberg's saving grace is that at the very least, he's doing what he does best and he's doing it as well as you'd expect. Clearly, there's a fanbase for that which will be over the moon to have more of what they like, unaffected by the changing tides of mainstream pop music.