Having famously conquered Australian hearts, minds, and ears (and the Hottest 100) with his breakout ukelele-strumming hit, ‘Riptide’, Melbourne singer-songwriter Vance Joy has dropped the first official single from his forthcoming debut album, one of the year’s most anticipated, as he cracks the US Top 100.
Vance Joy has already teased his new track, ‘Mess Is Mine’, with two short clips on his Facebook account, but now the full-length single and music video have dropped online. Featuring deft acoustic plucking and his distinctive vocals, Joy premiered the track on Triple J this afternoon, saying that thus far the only people that had heard the new tune in full were “my sister, me and the band, the producer… and dad.”
The accompanying video, directed by Luci Schroder (who’s made clips for Alpine and World’s End Press previously) features a stray polar bear paddling his way into the bright lights of the big city, with a blink and you’ll miss it cameo from Vance Joy himself in the back of a cab driven by the bear as his vehicle is accosted by youths.
“My favourite bit is the bridge – the lyrics in that,” James Keogh – the tall brains behind the Vance Joy alias – tells Triple J of ‘Mess Is Mine,’ describing it as “one of the more direct songs I’ve written.”
It’s the lead single from Vance Joy’s first full-length album, titled Dream Your Life Away (out 5th September via Liberation Music) named after a lyric in John Lennon’s ‘Watching The Wheels’. The 13-track release also marks the first in Vance Joy’s unprecedented five-album US deal with Atlantic Records.
Dream Your Life Away also features ‘Riptide’, which was the biggest selling song by an Aussie artist in 2013 as well as the most streamed track on Spotify. It also managed its way into a Top 10 position over in the UK where Keogh has been appearing on British radio and scaling up the charts since January.
[include_post id=”406368″]
The success of ‘Riptide’ is now beginning to take swell in America, where it has just cracked into the Top 100 – coming in at #92 on the Billboard chart – capitalising on an 18 month long push into the US market, now shifting one million sales internationally.
“We’ve put a lot of hard work into it. I’m definitely riding it, pushing it hard,” Keogh tells News Corp. “I feel like we’ve done all the hard stuff, going to the middle of nowhere and playing Riptide to whoever would listen in random places, so we’ll see what happens now but everyone seems optimistic it’ll go up.”
Joy has been touring hard internationally, playing a string of music festivals overseas – charming crowds at Bonnaroo, Firefly, and most recently at Glastonbury 2014.
He plays Splendour In The Grass in Byron Bay at the end of the month, headlining the GW McLennan Tent on Saturday night for an hour-long set that will feature selections from his forthcoming debut, before heading off for more international US and European touring. That includes appearances at Pukkelpop, Canada’s Osheaga, Outside Lands in San Francisco, and V Festival in the UK.
View the artwork and tracklisting for Vance Joy’s Dream Your Life Away (out 5th September via Liberation Music) in full below.
Tracklisting:
Winds of Change
Mess Is Mine
Wasted Time
Riptide
Who Am I
From Afar
We All Die Trying To Get It Right
Georgia
Red Eye
First Time
All I Ever Wanted
Best That I Can
My Kind Of Man
