Dream Your Life Away is the debut studio album by Australian singer-songwriter Vance Joy. It was released in Australia on 5 September 2014 via Liberation Music. The album was released on 9 September 2014 in the US via Atlantic Records and worldwide via Warner Music. The album has peaked to number 1 on the Australian Albums Chart. The album includes the singles "From Afar", "Riptide", "Mess Is Mine", "First Time" and "Georgia". A "Deluxe Edition" was released on 4 September 2015, consisting of two new tracks and five live tracks. "Fire and the Flood" and "Straight into Your Arms" were also released as singles. As of January 2018, the album has worldwide sales over 2,000,000.
Background
During a performance in Boston, Vance Joy explained that the song "My Kind of Man" included advice his uncle once gave him when he was young. But he later learned from his father that the quoted advice was actually from a Lynyrd Skynyrd song. Vance Joy noted that though the lyrics changed, the message stayed the same: "Find something you love and understand.”
Singles
"From Afar" was released as the lead single from the album on 21 January 2013. "Riptide" was released as the second single from the album on 21 May 2013, the song has peaked to number 6 on the Australian Singles Chart and number 10 on the UK Singles Chart, the song has also charted in Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland and United States. "Mess Is Mine" was released as the third single from the album on 9 July 2014, the song has peaked to number 33 on the Australian Singles Chart. "First Time" was released as the fourth single from the album on 4 August 2014, the song has charted in Belgium. "Georgia" was announced in February 2015 as the fifth single. It has currently peaked at number 11 on the Australian Singles Chart. "Fire and the Flood" and "Straight into Your Arms" were also released as singles from the deluxe version of the album.
Critical reception
Timothy Monger from AllMusic noted that the album is "built around the centerpiece of "Riptide" and that it "offers up a dozen or so additional songs in that familiar mold of romantic, introspective, acoustic folk-pop". He felt that the album "focuses on gently picked lovelorn pleas and somewhat uninspired romantic phrasing" and commented that it "seems a bit too middle of the road to really distinguish him from the crowded pack of similar young bards." Clash writer Jack Scourfield praised the album's "heartfelt honesty" that can "spread the youthful nostalgia adeptly across any generational gaps." He also noted that the album "does become prone to dragging during some of its less well-defined, slower numbers." Jaymz Clements for Rolling Stone Australia gave Dream Your Life Away a positive review, stating that the album effectively " there's more to Vance Joy than "Riptide"", noting that the album is "confident, self-assured and classically Australian, with an appeal that's universal."
Commercial performance
On 13 September 2014 the album entered the Australian Albums Chart at number one. It is the eleventh album to reach number one for an Australian act in 2014 and the first time ever that the Liberation label have landed back-to-back number ones after Jimmy Barnes's album reached number one the previous week. In the United States, the album peaked at number 17 on the US Billboard 200 chart and number two on the Top Alternative Albums chart. The album was eventually certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America for combined sales and album-equivalent units of over a million units in the United States.
