Caroline Binley
Copy Editor
Who I’m listening to: Vance Joy
Favorite track: “Riptide”
Similar to: Mumford and Sons, Dresses, The Neighbourhood
 
In all honesty, the fact that I’ve even heard of Vance Joy is nothing more than the product of an epic iTunes mishap. While trying to buy “Sun Shy,” an adorable song by the Portland-based indie-pop group Dresses, I managed to waste a whole iTunes gift card on Vance Joy’s Sept. 9 album, “Dream Your Life Away,” instead.
The amount of things I did wrong is amazing. I failed to differentiate between two distinctive band names as well as whether or not I wanted to buy the entire album, and I didn’t even pick an artist from the right continent (apparently he’s actually quite popular over in Australia).
The moral of the story is two-fold: do not make financial decisions while using coffee as an alternative to sleep, but don’t write off artists whose albums you accidentally buy at two in the morning, either.
It turns out that while I messed up literally everything else about this particular iTunes adventure, I did pick an artist in the right genre, and the guy does (thankfully) know how to sing.
In fact, as my bitterness and disappointment fade, Dream Your Life Away is growing on me. A lot. It’s his first album following his 2013 EP, “God Loves You When You’re Dancing,” and it’s a perfect mix of quiet songs like “Georgia” and “Best That I Can” to burn through while you study complete with pump-up jams like “Riptide” to blast when you’re done.
His mix near-acoustic vocals and guitar with upbeat melodies, sweet lyrics (not exactly deep, but not complete garbage, either) and a unique voice isn’t enough to make the album worth belting out, but it’s perfect for any and every time you need to fill silence without overpowering it.
I don’t think I’m capable of waxing poetic about Vance Joy for hours on end — at least not when the humiliation that accompanies my late-night shopping stupidity is this fresh  — but for nine dollars I didn’t mean to spend, things turned out a lot better than I deserved them to.