God Loves You When You're Dancing is the debut extended play by Australian singer-songwriter Vance Joy. The EP was nominated for two awards at the ARIA Music Awards of 2013; ARIA Award for Breakthrough Artist - Release, but lost to Flume by Flume and ARIA Award for Best Pop Release, but lost to Armageddon by Guy Sebastian. You'll hear some of what would later come to be known as the Louisville sound in Moss Icon, the weird precociousness and insularity that marks Squirrel Bait and Slint, as well as later exponents like Rodan.
Slint would attempt something similar a few years later with the exquisite "Good Morning, Captain", but Moss Icon's vision of an epic is shaggier and more earthy. Here and in their later work, the band extends and abstracts hardcore forms until they sound more like rituals than punk songs. The EP was nominated for two awards at the ARIA Music Awards of 2013; ARIA Award for Breakthrough Artist - Release, but lost to Flume by Flume and ARIA Award for Best Pop Release, but lost to Armageddon by Guy Sebastian. The result was what's often called post-hardcore, a fragmented movement that dominated American underground rock from the late 80s through the 90s. There's little more to the song than this repeated slack-to-tense progression, with the quiet sections growing ever noisier and more unhinged. If some of the tracks on disc two feel strained-- the heavy-handed antiwar piece "Memorial" and a remake of "As Afterwards the Words Still Ring" (heard in an earlier version on Lyburnum), where Vance flirts with preachiness as he describes an escaped slave fleeing from attack dogs-- they do little to diminish the enthralling mystique of Complete Discography as a whole. "We have living respiration/ A breath echo vibration/ Solid sun/ Inspiration," Vance declares in a tumbling blend of chant and speech, sounding like a man who's found his own version of God in nature. But in a way, Moss Icon were even further out there. Moss Icon's output demands a full intellectual and emotional engagement, and rewards it completely; their songs leave you feeling you've just stumbled out of a sweat lodge, delirious but refreshed. He is an artist and this EP is his masterpiece. In the Complete Discography booklet, there's a photo of Vance kneeling on a stage, grimacing and clutching his head, as though the demons won't leave him alone. [2] In January 2016, the week count was at 120. Moss Icon sprung from no well-known scene. Almost more than Slint's own work, the song prefigures the post-Spiderland continuum with eerie exactitude: It's hard to hear Vance's opening monologue, accompanied by folkish clean-toned guitar, and not think of June of 44, Dianogah, and all the other bands who borrowed from the Louisville playbook. This is where your Fugazis and Slints come in, bands that made a clear break with the first wave's unfiltered vitriol, but held on to its core mission: Be yourself, and don't worry about whether anyone else gets it. The rest of Lyburnum covers a lot of ground-- psychedelic postpunk ("Cricketty Rise"), a borderline metallic diatribe ("Mirror"), a grave anti-patriotic elegy with some of Vance's most evocative lyrics on record ("Happy")-- always maintaining the same level of urgency. "[6] [5], Grace Goodfellow of The Ripe TV gave the extended play a positive review, praising each song and concluding; "Vance Joy isn’t just a musician. 1 on the ARIA Australian Artists Singles Chart and was still on that chart in that month for 208 weeks; it also peaked at No.
"I wish that I could see/ What's going bad with me," Vance shouts, as Joy and co. back him with needling, throbbing patterns. These tracks are punk, pure and simple-- less speedy than, say, Minor Threat, but with the same sense of young DIY musicians grasping tight to the only thing that makes sense to them. His performances harness the same energy; they sound like exorcisms.
The rest of Complete Discography (disc two of the CD version) features a grab bag of sessions from before, after, and even during the Lyburnum recordings. It's overhwelming to encounter this full body of work in one chunk. The musicians bolster him with rhythms that feel both driving and infinitely expandable; DiGialleonardo's free-range basslines, in particular, are songs unto themselves. Here, as in the later material, the band uses passionate focus to convey how it feels to come unglued. (Joy's guitar solo, a series of variations on a simple postpunky lead, is a 15-second marvel that looks ahead to his more blatantly psychedelic work in the Convocation and current project Slow Bull.) Hardcore ended with a question mark, not a period. But the band owns its minimal materials completely, embracing chaos while breathing in unison like a set of lungs. [7], *sales figures based on certification alone^shipments figures based on certification alone, ARIA Award for Breakthrough Artist - Release, Australian Recording Industry Association, "Vance Joy's Riptide breaks Lady Gaga's incredible record on the Australian charts", "ARIA Singles: Justin Bieber 'Love Yourself' Is Australia's First No 1 Of 2016", "Vance Joy Talks New Music, Vinyl Release of 'God Loves You When You're Dancing': Exclusive", "Week Commencing ~ 30th September 2019 ~ Issue #1543", "VANCE JOY – GOD LOVES YOU WHEN YOU'RE DANCING", "Vance Joy - 'God Loves You When You're Dancing' - EP Review", "ARIA Charts – Accreditations – 2020 Singles", "God Loves You When You're Dancing (EP) by Vance Joy", "God Loves You When You're Dancing EP by Vance Joy", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=God_Loves_You_When_You%27re_Dancing&oldid=977999564, Use Australian English from November 2019, All Wikipedia articles written in Australian English, Short description is different from Wikidata, Album articles lacking alt text for covers, Certification Table Entry usages for Australia, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 12 September 2020, at 07:46.
Suddenly, Laurence and guitarist Tonie Joy lock in like a vise around DiGialleonardo's riff, and Vance unleashes his full-throated scream. [3], In March 2019, to celebrate the EP's 6 year anniversary, Joy announced a limited edition 10" of the EP on vinyl for release on 26 April. One minute he might remind you of a D.C. hardcore shouter, an angry young man hollering himself hoarse; the next, he's muttering cryptic poetry in an archaic tongue. Any label you could pin on them seems inadequate, and in the end, what more could you ask? It's clear that these are songs that had to come out. In contrast, the last three songs from disc two, first issued on a 1988 7" that preceded Lyburnum, take a more elemental approach. Bassist Monica DiGialleonardo sets up a gothy bass vamp, and drummer Mark Laurence adds sparse punctuation. It was released in Australia on 22 March 2013 via Liberation Music. ‘’God Loves You When You’re Dancing’’ is a beautiful piece of art – it really, truly is. But there are few clearer illustrations of how hardcore birthed its "post-" than the Moss Icon discography, reissued here in a spare yet elegant package (heavy on artwork and light on annotation) in time for the band's upcoming reunion. Pitchfork is the most trusted voice in music.
At the center of it all is frontman Jonathan Vance.