Parents' Pick #2: Dream Your Life Away by Vance Joy Revised

This week I found it very difficult to pick an album from my parents’ playlist to discuss. I decided I wanted to pick a more recent album this time, just to change things up a bit. My parents do not really have that many newer artists on their playlist so there was not a lot to choose from but I still found it hard to choose. In the end I decided on Vance Joy’s album Dream Your Life Away, mostly because it is one of my favorites as well plus I’ve also seen him perform live before and even have the album on vinyl.

            James Keogh, or Vance Joy as he is commonly known, is an Australian singer-song writer who has very recently come up on the top charts radar with his first hit “Riptide.” While it is great to start your music career off with a huge hit, Jaymz Clements discussed in his Rolling Stone review of Vance Joy that this creates a challenge for the rest of the album to be just as good. Quite flawlessly, I believe Dream Your Life Away managed to live up to the expectations set from its first single. This album features more big hits such as “Georgia” and “Mess is Mine” and also a lot more of Vance Joy’s signature ukulele. This album is very consistent with an over-all concept of the struggles of growing up in life and in love and bittersweet intimate lyrics.

            The slight variations we find within the songs on this album are not in the concepts or lyrics but rather in the musicality. While most of the songs prominently feature either a ukulele or soft acoustic guitar accompanied by Vance Joy’s muffled, hazy voice, there are a few stand-outs on the album. Take for example the song “Red Eye,” which has a lot more percussion than most of the other songs and a much louder version of Vance Joy’s voice in the chorus along with string instruments, such as a cello and violin. Another song that differs on the album is “Straight into Your Arms” which has a few distinctive synth sounds in the background,  this may seem strange for such an acoustic artist but it is still well received.

            The variations in the musicality really made it difficult for me to figure out what genre I would consider this album to be. Vance Joy could be placed into many categories such as singer-song writer, indie folk, and indie pop. I think it is definitely easy to say this album fits into the genre of indie folk. The album has an obvious folk feel with its soft lyrics and almost country like acoustics, but it definitely leans more towards indie lacking more of the country feel that many folk songs have. I wouldn't totally call it indie pop either because most of the album isn’t very upbeat or mainstream. The one thing that gives this album credibility in the indie pop genre is that many indie pop artists are/could be featured in a commercial or movie or trailer, and Vance Joy has had songs featured in both a movie and commercial. His song “Riptide” was featured in a Go-Pro commercial and his song “Great Summer” was featured in the movie Paper Towns. So I guess you could categorize this album as indie pop, more specifically commercial indie pop.

            However, what made it easier for me to place this album into a genre is where it came from. I never even considered the birthplace of an artist to be influential to the genre of their music, but it definitely is. I never would have noticed this if I had not read Jaymz Clements review that I previously mentioned. In his review, Clements noted that the songs Vance Joy had on this album were songs that artists like Powderfinger and Boy & Bear could have or would have wanted to release. After listening to a few of these two artists’ songs, I definitely did notice connections between them and Vance Joy. While Powdefinger and Boy & Bear definitely lean more towards a rock sound than an acoustic one, the subject of the lyrics is where you notice the most similarity. All of them have such intimate relatable lyrics, there are definitely songs they all have where the musicality is also similar though. Boy & Bear’s song “Southern Sun” could almost be mistaken for a Vance Joy song at the very beginning. It then strays away to sound more rock than acoustic but what I would call the Australian influences are definitely still there.

            So, if I had to specify which genre Vance Joy’s Dream Your Life Away would be placed into, I would call it “Commercial Australian Indie Folk.” While it would fit perfectly into my brand new, made up, melting pot of genres, it also still some how would stand out there too. I mean the album has done so well in the American top charts that it would stand out of the Australian roots as well. Personally I find genre to be very subjective and hard to describe, the well known main genres we already have established are just too broad for things to fit perfectly into them.

            In a genre such as indie, with such a large variety of sounds and artists, it can be hard to describe a particular artists roots within it. But, after looking more closely at Vance Joy's album and sound, it was obvious to see where he both did and did not fit in. At the end of the day though, Vance Joy has released an extremely strong and consistent album for it being his debut album, and I think my parents would agree with me on that too!