Review Summary: Pleasant folk with mainstream attraction.
Finding a place in the crossover between commercial radio and quality folk is a hard thing to do. Filled to the brim with easy listening folk songs, Vance Joy’s debut album Dream Your Life Away successfully accomplishes this difficult feat.
Following the hugely successful Riptide, Dream Your Life Away is one of the most anticipated albums of the year. Unfortunately, its unremarkable collection of songs means that it will struggle to stand apart from the crowd. This doesn’t mean it should be tossed away however: most of the songs are satisfying, charming and accessible to all. Dream Your Life Away works as an album due to its simplicity: each track on the album is reduced to its core components of melody, voice and lyrics. Any addition to this, like the brass in Everybody Dies Trying To Get It Right, is a carefully considered supplement to this balance. This makes for a comfortable listen. Essentially, this is the album everyone in the family will agree to listen to on a long car drive.
Sadly, Dream Your Life Away has many flaws. Winds Of Change is a very underwhelming introduction to the album, while Wasted Time sounds like a poor recreation of his earlier work in Riptide and Play With Fire. Furthermore, First Time, the most upbeat song on the album, is just terrible. The lyrics of the annoying, repetitive chorus are far too similar to Cat Stevens’ classic The First Cut Is The Deepest. Seriously: “You’ll find out that the deepest cut is the first time/First time’s always cut is the deepest.” This is like a 12 year old with a disregard for grammar changing the order of the words in their homework so they don’t get caught plagiarising from Wikipedia. Also, with thirteen tracks about love on it, many songs are lyrically tedious. Thankfully, album highlights Red Eye, Georgia and single Mess Is Mine, get the album back on track.
Surprisingly, Dream Your Life Away improves considerably towards the latter half. The songs here are more assured, and less commercially driven (First Time is an exception to this). Unlike the underwhelming opening track, closing track My Kind Of Man is splendid. This heart-warmer is a fitting end to the album.
Overall, while there’s a lot to like about Vance Joy’s debut album Dream Your Life Away, it fails to strike the listener like last year’s EP God Only Loves You When You’re Dancing. With greater consistency, and some more magic like that found in Riptide, Dream Your Life Away could be something special. Sadly, Vance Joy’s debut album falls short of its hefty expectations.
