Dream Your Life Away (Special Edition)

On his full-length debut, Australian singer/songwriter Vance Joy offers smartly constructed, sun-dappled roots-pop ballads, delivered in an unaffected tenor. “Mess Is Mine” boasts Lumineers-style handclaps and “Red Eye” features a mournful, mellow twang, while pensive album closer “My Kind of Man” floats on a crystalline falsetto. Rugged and earthy, with an unabashedly tender heart, Dream Your Life Away delivers on the promise of Joy’s ukulele-led 2013 breakthrough single, “Riptide”—and then some.