If Ed Sheeran didn't exist, Mike "Passenger" Rosenberg would probably be the deceptively wimpish balladeer bringing home the Brit and Ivor Novello awards. Despite scoring one of 2013's biggest singles with Let Her Go, Rosenberg is still a relative unknown – something alluded to on this album's title track: "Everyone's feeling the ugly noise/ I don't know what they're talking about/ All I need's a whisper in a world that only shouts." His whisper – actually, more a snaggle-toothed rasp – is a vehicle for some characterful observations: Rosenberg's strength is storytelling, and Whispers brims with striking vignettes. Bullets' alt-country sparseness underscores the pathos of a collector finding his treasured artefacts stolen; Riding to New York is both an understated folk-pop travelogue and a there-but-for-the-grace recollection of an encounter with a cancer patient. Rosenberg reserves his best lines, though, for his plentiful moments of wrath. "I don't give a fuck if it gets you in the chart or not … I don't know how to please everyone all of the time," he rages on 27, biting the hand that feeds him with the vividness that typifies the whole album.