Album Review: Passenger - 'Songs for the Drunk and Broken Hearted'
Master of melody and beloved indie-folk treasure, Passenger, is back with his 13th studio album. Songs For The Drunk And Broken Hearted is the perfect title for a project that focuses on the realities of a breakup, and those ‘songs’ are exactly what we’re given.
The opening track, Sword From The Stone, hits instantly like a punch to the gut, being about the inability to move on from a recent relationship. He asks about his ex’s family, and says he can’t ‘pull the sword from the stone’. It’s beautiful and direct, perfectly capturing the feeling of someone being torn away from you like a limb, a vital part of your life.
The Way That I Love You is an intimate tune about wishing somebody could love themselves as much as they’re loved by others. At its core, there are resemblances to the likes of Crosby, Stills & Nash laced within its tender acoustic guitar riffs and lullaby-like vocal melodies, making this feel like a long-time classic.
The track Sandstorm is a quietly swelling epic at 5 minutes long, which sees Passenger waxing poetic on the idea of being the sandstorm and a lover being the sand, feeling as though you’re the chaos in someone’s life and being hard to understand. The drums, horns and strings weave their way into the mix seamlessly, creating a cinematic listening experience that makes you want to go back and play on repeat.
Songs like Remember To Forget and Nothing Aches Like a Broken Heart work so well in that they’d fit perfectly into a Nashville dive bar and just as equally a trendy South London pub, with sliding and shimmery guitars, and hearty Billy-Joel-like piano chords bouncing around the latter track.
If this album is anything, it’s a reminder that sometimes even artists don’t have the answers to love. That it’s okay to wade in melancholy if you need to, and sometimes to feel heartbroken is to feel alive. As long as you don’t dwell forever and you learn to find love again in the simplest of things.
Words by Curtis Saunders