CD: Vance Joy – Dream Your Life Away

Dream Your Life Away is the debut album from Vance Joy, a pop-folkie whose style suggests Ed Sheeran without the cloying niceness. These songs of young love and of a young man spreading his wings are pretty much created out of little more than vocals and an acoustic guitar. There is occasional support from other musicians, but this is understated and the rolling groove that characterises much of Dream Your Life Away is pretty much just Joy singing and strumming along.

Most of the first half of the album is mellow and laid-back but still manages to swing from time to time. The previously released single, “Riptide”, breaks from this template though, and is fairly jaunty. It also features a woman who’s the “closest thing to Michelle Pfeifer that you’ve ever seen”, so Joy is clearly not doing too badly for himself.

It’s in the second half of the album, however, that the quality of the songs moves up a gear. “Georgie” is mellow and relaxed and gains significantly from a particularly unfussy production that lets the song breathe. “First Time”, the album’s lead single, adds a bit of urgency and a loopy groove and “All I Ever Wanted” is a good attempt at folk-rock that manages to keep the likes of the Levellers fully at arm’s length. It is the sumptuous “Red Eye” that really shines though. A nice bit of understated organ accompanies Joy and his acoustic guitar, while a choral backing eventually brings things to an uplifting conclusion.

Dream Your Life Away works as an introduction and a statement of intent and suggests that folkie-influenced tunes could still be quite a commercial proposition. Joy might just want to apply a bit more variety though before he heads back into the studio for his follow-up.