Vance Joy Reclaims The #1 Crown On Independent Aussie Music Charts

Reliable crowd-pleaser Vance Joy has reclaimed the #1 position on this week's Carlton Dry Independent Music Charts with his 2014 album Dream Your Life Away, now enjoying its 65th week in the rankings as we enter the final stretch before Christmas.

Despite the festivity of the season, The Ten Tenors' Our Christmas Wish suffers a drop to #2 with Joy's ascension, perhaps the most family-friendly entries in a top five otherwise populated by heavier, more nuanced concerns including the ubiquitously acclaimed Sometimes I Sit & Think, & Sometimes I Just Sit, by Courtney Barnett (#3), comeback album Rock Or Bust, from AC/DC (#4), and the chart-busting heaviness of Ire, by Parkway Drive (#5).

We're not total grinches, however, as Hillsong Worship's Open Heaven/River Wild stays high (though down a rung) at 6, just above Sia's slowly slipping 1000 Forms Of Fear (#7, down from #3) and Hermitude's Dark Night Sweet Light, up a few spots to #11 (from #8) this week. The top 10 is rounded out by Flight Facilities (Down To Earth, #9) and Russell Morris (Red Dirt Red Heart, #10), though fellow Aussie icons Lee Kernaghan (Spirit Of The Anzacs, #11) and Jimmy Barnes (30:30 Hindsight, #12) aren't far off the pace.

There is a singular debut on the full-length ladder this week — James Reyne's All The Hits Live, at the #20 cutoff — but, by the numbers, it's actually AC/DC's week for albums; they enjoy a hat trick of entries on the rankings as seminal LP Back In Black hangs around for another week (#16, down from #12) and Live makes its re-entry at #18.

There are more lower-half re-entries over in the Singles stakes, while the upper echelons remain largely unchanged; the top four — Marcus Marr & Chet Faker's The Trouble With Us, Vance Joy's Fire & The Flood, Sia's Alive and The Rubens' Hoops, respectively — all stay steady on last week's results, with "new" #5 Riptide, also by Vance Joy, leaping up seven spots in its 140th week of tracking to land just ahead of another of the uke-slinger's singles, namely Georgia, at #6.

Joy is responsible for one of the Singles chart's re-entries this week, as Mess Is Mine rears its head inside the top 20 once more at #16, just behind the similarly re-appearing Peking Duk and Take Me Over (featuring SAFIA), back at #15. 

Although Joy enjoys a strong showing this period, it truly is the week for AC/DC as they enjoy a similarly strong week in the Singles rankings, with ever-reliable anthem Thunderstruck inside the top 10 (and up two spots) at #8 this week. That's far from all, though, as the back half of the ladder also includes fellow iconic cuts and re-entrants You Shook Me All Night Long (#13), T.N.T. (#18), It's A Long Way To The Top (#19) and Highway To Hell (#20).