By: Josh Kitchen / May 11, 2024
Photo by Mclean Stephenson
You can't pigeonhole Jack Ladder's music. Since releasing his debut record Not Worth Waiting For almost 20 years ago in 2005, Ladder, real name Tim Rogers, has put out seven albums where he's reinvented himself on almost each one. From the mid-aughts folk-rock that can be found on the aforementioned Not Worth Waiting For, to the NME described, "Australian gothic masterpiece" Hurtsville, his first album under the moniker Jack Ladder and The Dreamlanders in 2011, the strings adorned Hijack! in 2021, to his latest, 2023's excellent synth-laden and aptly titled, Tall Pop Syndrome, Ladder has become one of music's finest and towering auteurs.
Towering is not a joke. When you meet him, Ladder truly towers over you at 6 feet 6 inches tall. His music has the same effect. Hurtsville has become a recent classic, with Ladder's bare and honest songwriting met with Burke Reid's Lanois-esque atmospheric and grand production. With album art reminding of Tom Wait's Rain Dogs, Hurtsville was Ladder's first record with The Dreamlanders, a sort of Australian supergroup consisting of Ladder, Donny Benét, Kirin J. Callinan, and Laurence Pike. The Dreamlanders just reunited for two Australian shows in February.
Tall Pop Syndrome is the result of a natural evolution of the melancholic and biting lyricism found on Ladder's previous records, and a fine example of his problem-solving songwriting style. It exists as a reaction to Ladder's current surroundings and experiences coming out of the pandemic and following up a record which he toured with a live string section where he'd play a grand piano every night. It's fitting that on Tall Pop Syndrome, Ladder makes peace with the ghosts of the artists who've inspired his work like David Bowie, Lou Reed, and David Berman - artists who walked the same chameleon-like paths as him. I spoke with Ladder in a wide-ranging conversation that touched on his songwriting, The Beach Boys' Love You, ghosts, The Simpsons, and he previewed his next album that should come out next year - his "L.A. album", as he puts it.
How were the Dreamlanders shows in February?
They’re always really special, and I don't take it for granted anymore. We don't get to do them very often because there's always a lot of logistics and it has to be the perfect time. Everyone is like ships in the night with Kirin [J. Callinan], Donny [Benét], Laurence [Pike], and even myself now. Every couple of years, there's this little moment at the end of summer where we're all still in town. It seems like the less we see of each other, and the less we rehearse together, the better we get. A lot of bands, when they don't play very much, they get on stage, and they're kind of scrambling to remember how things go, or one of the guys hasn't picked up his instrument in a few years. Everyone has their own personal world and all are incredibly active, so when we get together everyone keeps getting better. It just heightens the show and we can go to places that are insane.
[Photo credit for image on the right: Eloise Labarbe-Lafon]
Do you find that after being in a band together for so long that you can read each other and anticipate where the show is going?
There’s stuff that happens like that. We have been playing together for a long time, but we also haven't played very much together for years. The band was primarily active between 2009 and 2015/16. Then it all kind of sort of went to seed a bit. After we did two tours of America in 2015, we weren't particularly well received, and it all became a bit too much. Then I started playing with Alex Cameron in his band, and then just playing solo just to try and get my music out there, because touring with a band and particularly that band, it was a logistical nightmare and incredibly expensive just to move around.
Your music has such an interesting evolution, from sort of folky stuff on your 2005 debut Not Worth Waiting For, and then the Dreamlanders stuff, to your newest record, Tall Pop Syndrome. The sound on this record is very 80s inspired with synths and drum machines. Can you talk about that?
I guess I never thought about being an artist in terms of like, what the music industry sort of defines as an artist. And I never wanted to have a band in a way that was, “the sound of the band.” I've always just been interested in songs, primarily. Everything that happens seems to be arbitrary and sort of by chance and designed as like problem-solving for a moment in time, rather than to be self-aware about my own personal brand or something. Because that is really just about the songwriting. And for me, it's always about trying to remain interested and excited about something. I feel like once you start mining your own sound, that's a bit of a dead end, because you’re constantly reaching for something. So, Tall Pop Syndrome was really a direct response to the Hijack! record that I'd made previously, which was with strings and orchestration, and it was very slow.
We performed it in recital halls with the strings and with a live band, and I was playing piano. I’d never played a piano live. I'm on like, a 16 foot Steinway, finding it very difficult to sort of engage with the audience the way you would play guitar and look into people's faces or whatever. Playing piano and trying to play with an orchestra with the strings section is like, nightmarish. I mean, I loved it, but it was really hard. It was one of the most stressful things that I've had to do. Alex Cameron asked me if I wanted to do The Killers tour that was coming up. I'd done it before, and you only get like 20-30 minutes. The last time I only took half the band and we had all sorts of technical issues, so I was like if I’m gonna do it again, I’m just gonna walk out there with a track and just sing the songs on my own. Because that’s really all it’s about. So I basically wrote that album as a means to create new work to perform for that situation.
It seems like very practical musical growth.
Sometimes I've done a record, and it feels like I've just done my PhD and I’ve handed in my dissertation, and then you turn up to make another record. It’s always this new learning curves thing. After I did the Playmates record I learned how to program MIDI and overdub stuff. Then I was writing a lot in MIDI. I did some stuff that was a bit fusiony, programmed with overdubs on top. I wanted it to be like Nebraska if Springsteen had a MIDI keyboard. It was supposed to be very intimate, and originally, it was really quite extended, and the songs were longer. It felt more dance oriented because it was a bit more cosmic. Then I got Kim [Moyes] from The Presets involved. I’d asked him to help me with some drum sounds, and he was like I’ll just mix it for you. I wanted to mix it on a tape machine and do sort of dubby spatial mixing, and he was like that’s a really stupid idea because the vocals are terrible and you need to re-record them so that the songs stick.
He ended up sort of producing it and rearranging it with me, and it was much better for his input. It was very different to what originally I thought I was going to do. But that’s how it always works. Every record always ends up so different to what you think you’re going to do, and it’s my job to sort of go along with it to a certain extent and just help keep it in a shape that makes sense to me. If I just went into the studio and went, this is exactly what I’m going to do, that’s disappointing in itself, because you already know what it is.
Speaking of Nebraska, Springsteen always says that it was hugely influenced by Alan Vega and Suicide. You mention Alan Vega and so many more musicians and artists who’ve passed away recently in Tall Pop Syndrome’s “Home Alone,” with it ending in you repeating lines like, “Little Richard’s in My house, David Bowie’s in My house, Harry Dean Stanton in My house.” Can you talk about the song and those musicians that seem to be in your head?
I remember being really affected. The first one that was really upsetting was when Lou Reed died in 2013. I had this very deep kind of sadness that lasted for weeks. It felt like I was posting Lou Reed songs every day on Facebook and no one cared. I was already pretty deep in the back catalogue. I had this like three CD box set that had a greatest hits, but it had all The Blue Mask stuff. That was a very formative thing. Kirin [J. Callinan] and I would just drive around listening to that later Lou Reed stuff. There was just an emptiness and then there was this thing that happened when Bowie died and Trump got in, Alan Vega died, and I had to do this Bowie tribute at the Sydney Opera House and everything started to feel very sad and end of the world. I’d do things on tour like I bought Leonard Cohen’s I’m Your Man on cassette, and then a week later he died, and then I did it again where I bought a Tom Petty cassette and he died the next day. All these people, I just felt very connected to.
I was just writing a song one day and thinking about all this music that I’m obsessed with and listen to all the time and it feels that I’m keeping them captive at my place. It’s a very genuine and earnest song that way. And I lived in the same house for almost 12 years or so outside of Sydney, and I’d recently split up with my girlfriend and moved out of that house. It felt like it was a meta obituary to my house that I lived in with my records and all these people. For me it’s a very important song.
Do you believe in ghosts?
Yeah.
Have you seen one?
I’ve felt ghosts. I lived in this town called Katoomba that's pretty spooky. There's a lot of old witches and wizards floating around, and everything is quite haunted up there. The house where I lived definitely felt like there were a lot of spirits and fairies and shit around.
[Pictured on the right: Brave souls on the Katoomba Ghost Bus Tour]
Do you think that ever seeped into songs?
No. I mean, there's a lot of songs that I wrote that I'm still sort of working on and there's a few haunted songs [laughs]. The haunted songs that are inspired by being haunted are the kind that are sort of impossible to finish and they kind of just shift around all the time. I can never really land on a thing. Every day I’ll try and write this song and I think I’ll know how it goes and then it shifts around again. It's almost like it's playing with me.
Are you writing now?
I’m supposed to come to America quite soon to do a record. It’s written and it’s all ready to go.
L.A., New York?
Well, I need to do my L.A. record. I’ve never actually recorded an album in L.A. and it’s a sort of songwriter album. I don’t think it’s a Dreamlanders record. It’s more in that sort of Plastic Ono Band therapy kind of album.
Were you listening to a lot of California bands while you were writing it?
No, but I was kind of obsessed with that Elton John song, “Skyline Pigeon.” They used it in the credits of The Favourite, but it was the harpsichord version from his first solo album, and then I found the one from Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Only The Piano Player, and was like oh my god, this is my shit. I can get really into that sort of sentimental piano music. My record’s not going to be like that though. It’s more of a divorce album. Records like [John Cale's] Paris 1919, that kind of thing. I think it might be my Paris 1919. Then I was thinking of the Barry's. Barry Gibb for his demo-ey kind of stuff, Barry White for that deep groove thing, and [Stanley Kubrick's] Barry Lyndon for that tragic classical sort of thing.
I was anticipating Barry Manilow. He was one of the last shows I saw before COVID, and “Mandy” was just great.
No, no, Barry Manilow wasn’t one of my guys. [goes on to sing “Margie” the parody of “Mandy” from The Simpsons] “Oh, Margie/You came and you found me a turkey / On my vacation away from workie.”
It’s funny, I was just talking about The Simpsons in another interview. I feel its cultural impact is actually kind of underrated, if that’s possible.
It's defined language to find a sense of perspective of the world. It's proper propaganda. I remember when it first came out, my dad worked in a rag trade. He'd been to like a trade fair in Las Vegas, and he'd been given a VHS of the first two episodes of The Simpsons. So I had the first two episodes of The Simpsons out of all my friends.
I feel like I learned a lot about your country from the Australia episode.
You learned about The Boot! Knifey-spoony!
Knifey-Spoony from The Simpsons Season 6 episode, "Bart vs. Australia"
I listened to your episode of the Jokermen podcast about Love & Theft. Their new season is about Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys. Let's talk about The Beach Boys.
Brian sort of failed in spectacular ways, which I think is what the Jokermen thing is about a lot. I listened to the episode on [Lou Reed & Metallica's] Lulu, and the thing that hit me was the way they were talking about the celebration of the attempt, and how that that's where the bravery is. And it's also in allowing for the possibility of failure, which doesn't happen in music so much anymore. It's so easy to make music now and to make it perfect. You never even get a sense of the attempt, and that's the most powerful thing. I think Brian, with like Beach Boys’ Love You and those kinds of more like, out there ones or even like SMiLE, the attempt is spectacular, and the room for failure is huge. Sometimes it hits and sometimes it doesn’t. But when it hits, it’s “’Til I Die.”
I bought a sealed original copy of Love You recently from Amoeba and immediately opened it.
It was really inspiring for my record, Hijack! I made the whole record with no concept of what the drums would do. I was talking to this comic book artist, and he said, have you checked out The Beach Boys’ Love You, and I hadn’t. Then I listened to it, and the drums are so weird on it. They kind of just come in sporadically and then disappear for a while. It’s not a particularly new idea, because Ringo would do those things where he’s playing the drums as more of a percussive thing. But to leave that much space in the drums and allow everything to sort of move around it, so that the drums aren’t the center of the thing that’s driving it was really an interesting and inspiring idea. The Beach Boys were my big thing when I was a kid because my dad was a surfer. We had the Beach Boys Greatest Hits and The Best of Van Morrison and that was kind of it. And maybe Creedence Clearwater Revival.
With The Beach Boys, it’s so fascinating because they have the early California fun in the sun stuff with cars and girls, and then the really deep stuff later you mentioned like "‘Til I Die" and SMiLE. Which makes me go back to what you were saying about your musical growth and not fitting into one box, and I think that’s what makes your growth as a musician really fascinating.
Pushing the boundaries is a really physical thing, and a bad metaphor, but there is this thing in terms of defining the space that you have. I remember Leonard Cohen said he was happy to just tend to his own little garden, and maybe I should be more content with my little garden. But, I’m constantly pushing my little perimeters wider. John Cale does a similar thing. I feel like I don’t have a choice in it. It’s not a conscious thing to be like, now I’m going to do this.
Everything feels like a very natural progression, with decisions that are guided by the songs that are written, which are inspired by the music you relate to most of the time and what’s within your means to get the job done. The Hijack! record only really worked because it was made in lockdown, and Laurence [Pike] had a friend who was a string arranger who just didn’t have much to do at the time. If those weren’t the circumstances, I probably would have just made the record on a keyboard at home. Everything is opportunity and chance and really just working with what’s available - it’s problem-solving.
[Photo credit for image on the left: Lilli Waters]
When can we expect the new record?
It probably won't come out until next year, realistically, but it's a record that's written and ready to go and hopefully it’ll be a big success recording it in Hollywood - the land of dreams.
Catch Jack Ladder on his upcoming Tall Pop 2 UK and European tour with support act Sad Girls Sex Club starting this week on May 14. Tour dates: https://jackladderandthedreamlanders.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jackladder/ Buy Tall Pop Syndrome: https://sound-merch.com.au/collections/jack-ladder
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