Jack Ladder - Hurtsville

Wed 29th Jun, 2011 in Music Reviews

Call it Jeff Buckley syndrome, but there’s been far too much of the ‘angelic falsetto’ in pop for the last 15 years or so – you can’t swing a Limited Edition Digipak without hitting a would-be Thom Yorke aching to show you just how very painful it is to be him.

It’s been quite heartening, then, to see the deep voice experiencing a bit of a return to form. The National’s Matt Berninger and Guy Garvey of Elbow have brought the broken baritone back into vogue, proving that very little says, “I’m pretty damned miserable” like singing at the bottom of your range.

That same worn-out voice is all over Hurtsville, Jack Ladder’s third record and a frontrunner for 2011’s Most Depressing. Jack sang in much the same range on his 2008 album Love Is Gone, but that record’s jaunty energy has been replaced by chilly synths and an outlook as jolly as a painkiller addiction.

Ladder’s voice is the album’s centre, a weary croon perfectly suited to Hurtsville’s slow-burning drama. With most of the songs stretching past the five-minute mark (album closer Giving Up The Giving Up is eight minutes even), Ladder and his backing band, the Dreamlanders, allow themselves to wallow in misery, men too exhausted to do much more than stare into space and reflect on what went wrong. Cold Feet lifts the riff from the Pretenders’ Brass in Pocket, surrounding it with so much negative space and cold synth waves that you can practically see Jack’s breath crystallising as he murmurs, “Now that you’re here with me/ I wanna…/I wanna leave”.

That icy tone is all over Hurtsville; the record’s monochrome cover art, with a slouching Ladder wreathed in steam, is a perfect indication of what lies inside. The Dreamlanders, made up of talented devils Kirin J Callinan (Mercy Arms), Laurenz Pike (PVT), and Donny Benét, have helped Ladder create a record that sound every bit as exhausted as Ladder himself.

And Ladder certainly does sound like he needs a decent rest. On Blinded By Love, Ladder’s voice creaks as he plumbs the depths of his range, while Dumb Love suggests he’s in danger of dozing off at the end of every line. Both these songs call to mind nothing so much as a worn-out Nick Cave, a statement that holds true across the rest of the album. Ladder’s voice, though, is more a more refined instrument than Cave’s, and he exercises those subtleties with the power and presence of a much older man. He’s able to channel the stately grace of the Psychedelic Furs ( Hurtsville ) and the expansive tone of the Triffids’ David McComb ( Cold Feet ), as well as Cave’s thundering menace.

Hurtsville is immersive and emotionally complex, and the texture of Ladder’s voice is a critical part of that. Sadly, though, his lyrics aren’t quite up to the same standard as the rest of the album. Very occasionally, he gets it right – Beautiful Sound’s chorus lyric (“when a heart breaks it makes a beautiful sound”) is something Cave might wish he’d written – but more often, the lyrics either drift by unnoticed or, worse, are so clumsy they interrupt the album’s atmosphere. Cold Feet trots out clichés more suited to daggy uncles (“I wanna make like a tree/I wanna leave”), while Hurtsville’s talk of flipping burgers sounds almost jokingly absurd.

Despite the odd clumsy lyric, though, Hurtsville is still an affecting and evocative record. Its weariness is bone-deep, and, like the National’s Boxer, has a kind of empathy that makes it strangely comforting when you, too, are exhausted and feeling low. Given his track record, it’s hard to guess how Jack Ladder will follow Hurtsville, but it would be interesting to hear him refine this voice rather than go off on a tangent – it’s certainly fertile ground.