Dream Your Life Away

Description

Vance Joyhas had an unexpectedly long time to finish his debut album,Dream Your Life Away. There’s a simple reason why – his first single Riptide kept charming the world and its charming author followed it around the globe. Several times over. In Australia, “Riptide” moved from alternative to commercial radio, then commercial TV and got a second wind after it became the first song to top Triple J’s Hottest 100 countdown without an album to call home.
Riptide went worldwide, hitting No. 10 in the UK, and Top 10 in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Ireland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. It has sold over a million copies worldwide, is being streamed over three million times a week and has cracked the American Top 100 after relentless touring. Riptide has gone four times platinum in Australia, with its award victory lap including the prestigious ARIA Song of the Year award.
“It’s taken on its own life,” the musician says of Riptide. “It’s definitely been a door opener. It’s running its own race now.” Naturally Riptide surfaces onDream Your Life Away, kept company by another track from theGod Loves You When You’re DancingEP, From Afar. “Winds of Change is the first song I ever wrote that I thought was any good,” Joy says. Good things came fast. He pieced together Riptide on a dirt cheap ukulele (he’s since upgraded) from a few songs sitting on his cerebral scrap heap. That area in the back of his head also gave rise to new single Mess is Mine, a charming construct of good sections he managed to shoehorn in one song.
Books and films also provided plenty of inspiration. The movie in Riptide wasMidnight Cowboy, while onDream Your Life Awaythe tune We All Die Trying To Get It Right started life when Joy was watching the movieInfamousabout writer Truman Capote. Who Am I parties like it’s 1899 – the year poet W.B Yeats wrote The Wind Among the Reeds. Georgia, one of the singer/songwriter’s personal favorites, was written right in the throes of Riptide fever.
Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast provoked the first cut is the deepest acknowledgement in First Time, the last song recorded for the album, again salvaged from one from Joy’s maybe pile. Red Eye captures a pre-frequent flyer Joy who didn’t know the phrase for the night flight, also with a few lyrical (and canine) nods to Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman.Dream Your Life Awaywas recorded mainly just outside of Seattle withproducer Ryan Hadlock(Lumineers, Gossip, Johnny Flynn) including a handful of songs (Mess is Mine, Winds of Change and Georgia) being finished off in a tree house on the studio grounds.
With his debut album finally finished,Vance Joyis in the enviable position of the entire world wanting to hear it all at the same time. He’s already blacked out the next year for touring, on the back of nearly two years of touring since Riptide was a mere ripple. The album title,Dream Your Life Away, came to him after hearing John Lennon’s 1981 classic Watching the Wheels. “He has that line ‘People say I’m crazy, dreaming my life away,’ and I love that idea. That title feels like a good reflection of my life recently. Its still all totally new to me. I still feel new as, which is good. I still feel like I’m just chipping away.”
Vance JoyDream Your Life AwayTrack Listing:
1. Winds Of Change2. Mess Is Mine3. Wasted Time4. Riptide5. Who Am I6. From Afar7. We All Die Trying To Get It Right8. Georgia9. Red Eye10. First Time11. All I Ever Wanted12. Best That I Can13. My Kind Of Man