"WHEN YOU WRITE A GREAT SONG, YOU GET CHILLS!"

Vance Joy is a modern singer-songwriter fingerstylist who keeps cranking out hits - but doesn't care what gear he uses to make them

- Jenna Scaramanga

It's rare for a new song to crack the list of essential beginner guitar tunes, but Vance Joy's 2014 breakthrough single Riptide did just that. Hitting just as school ukulele orchestras were becoming popular, the uke-powered folk-pop number proved an ideal starting point for strummers of all ages. It made Joy not just one of the world's most visible young guitarists, but also one of the major inspirations for new beginners. Vance is still pleased at the impact it's had.

"When I'm learning a song I go on tab websites. Sometimes there's a list of all the most tabbed songs and Riptide's in the top few," he smiles. "I've walked past people busking it, and I've walked past kids playing it in little groups if one of the kids plays guitar. It's cool that it's had that effect. It feels like some people's first song they learn either on ukulele or guitar, and that is cool. You just learn that down-up up-down-up rhythm and then you're off."

Now returning with his third album, In Our Own Sweet Time, Vance's sound is still guitar driven. His fingerstyle patterns are more involved than we usually hear from pop stars, and this time the sophisticated guitar lines are augmented by lush arrangements including woodwind, horns, and piano for an epic indie-pop sound. Amidst all that, guitar holds the album's centre of gravity. Vance is happy to discuss how he developed his style.

"When I was learning guitar, the songs I wanted to learn were just the most classic guitar riffs, and then Red Hot Chili Peppers songs and some Metallica intros," he says. "The fingerpicking songs that I was inspired by and tried to play were Nothing Else Matters, then in one of the early theory books that I got when I was 11 or 12 there was a Spanish song, Asturias [by Isaac Albéniz], and then also Classical Gas [by Mason Williams] when I got a little bit better. I never really mastered that, but enough to play parts of it."