Jack Ladder And The Dreamlanders - Hurtsville (2011)

HURTSVILLE is Sydney musician Jack Ladder’s third album, and his first featuring The Dreamlanders; Laurenz Pike, Kirin J Callinan & Donny Benét. Ladder’s first release in close to three years, it follows 2008’s Australian Music Prize nominated and Red Bull awarded Love Is Gone.

But something happened here, and the overall mood and sonic feel of HURTSVILLE is distinctly different from his previous releases. The good time Motown rattle and shake is replaced by a sparse cinematic sound that describes the tortured Australian landscape as much as it does the failings of the human heart. First single ‘Cold Feet’ arrives with chiming guitars and droning synths, thick with memories of 80′s Australiana and a lyrical gravitas unheard since Ron Peno fronted Died Pretty.

Recorded by Burke Reid at the Blackburn Estate in Yass; a turn of the century castle during the dead of winter, HURTSVILLE will creep under your skin and resonate to your core like the reverb soaked guitars, throbbing rhythm ace beats and floating string machines that filter through Jack Ladder’s stories.