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"Riptide" is not a remarkable song. Even if you like the song, it's hard to deny that it's anything more than an ex-footy player smashing out 3 whole chords on a ukelele with nonsense lyrics about some woman he probably wants to bonk. Its popularity seems to boil down to just happening to be the song of its type to cut into such a consciousness that it isn't as blatantly indistinct as it is. Of course when I say 'just happening', I'm of course referring to all the behind the scenes label work, all the many, many ad spots the song picked up over the course of its chart life, don't forget that a TV commercial is what propelled it into the top 50 in the first place.<br><br>The point I'm getting at with this is that Vance Joy is not a remarkable artist. The contriVANCEs that come together to make his music inescapable have little to do with anything that could be described as remarkable musicianship or songwriting. This is often how second album syndrome takes form for hyped bands, the lightning in a bottle that may well just be a catchy tune that was heard at the right place in the right time is not easily obtainable.<br><br>"Fire and the Flood" perhaps exemplifies this more so than any other song in his catalogue. Part of me wants to go easy on it because it did initially just seem to be a bonus track tacked onto a deluxe album, but my oh my did this plague me for half a year on the radio. <br><br>I remain convinced that it's the worst song he's ever written and released. It just shows a severe limitation in songwriting ideas, with the lyrics falling clunkily together with forced rhymes and syllables. Never mind that 'fire' and 'water' are individually among the most cliche lyrical themes to tackle, but the song refuses to even use them in any logical fashion, not expanding the metaphors but only introducing an incongruent one. What do fire & floods have to do with blood, apart from rhyming? And all this is, is just to distract from the fact that the song as a whole, is just a song about some girl that Keoghie wants to (or just did) bonk, which is essentially half of his discography at this point. I don't blame him, songwriting is hard. It just further shows that his discography is relentlessly unremarkable.<br><br>(Also seriously this song pushes it too hard in regards to the fact that between the mush mouth singing, the light strumming and now the pompous horn sections, Vance Joy is just a poor man's Beirut, who don't get nearly enough attention because their music isn't on TV commercials.) | 
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