He may share his name with You Am I’s idiosyncratic frontman, but that doesn’t mean Tim Rogers (aka Jack Ladder) wants to tackle Missy Higgins or do guitar windmills, he tells JOSH JENNINGS.

It's hard to decide what's more unlikely. Wearing women's clothes and a wig or deciding to belt out ‘Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend’. But 25-year-old Sydney troubadour Jack Ladder did both: a cappella and in front of his entire primary school no less. Relaying that anecdote isn't the only reason why he presents as every bit the curiosity on the phone. He’s also prone to pausing mid-sentence for so long it makes you start to wonder whether it's worth running the risk of interrupting to at least determine he hasn't hung up, become disconnected or worse. Then we he does resume, his voice is so soft it sounds like he's basically not there anyway. Other times, he just sounds like he's incredibly bored.

It’s difficult to fathom then, how he's the man behind Love Is Gone, given all its jazzy and bluesy bombast and its curious rollicking neon-lit baritone vocalising. Ladder says he attributes the lack of endeavour to "get everything perfect" to getting that album – the follow-up to the much more timid and morose Not Worth Waiting For – to breathe like it does.

"We only really rehearsed the rhythm section and all the pianos and guitars and stuff were kind of improvised in the studio, and it was never about trying to create a real opus or anything," he says. "We were just trying to create an energy and tap into something you can't necessarily hear ... I'd been working previously in the country on a record with lots of stuff going on. There was too much stuff, like too many oboes and a wind ensemble playing. It was cluttered and dull and it didn't mean anything any more. You can really get lost in the process of recording and I just wanted to make something that was a bit simple and good, you know - like, good soup."

As you might suspect from the title, Love Is Gone's overarching theme centres on male/female relationships in one incarnation or another. But endowing the record with a grand theme wasn't a priority, Ladder says. "I just wanted to write simple songs, like Smokey Robinson and those kinds of Motown songwriters that wrote simply and directly from the heart without thinking any more than that."

“You can really get lost in the process of recording and I just wanted to make something that was a bit simple and good, you know - like, good soup.”

Simple is the word he uses to describe how Spunk Records picked the album up too. "I didn't ever give the record to anybody else. I just gave it to Aaron [Curnow] and he put it out - no more complex than that. I like Spunk Records; I realised that all the records I was buying at a certain point in time were coming out through Spunk. And I was like, I wanted to be associated with the people that Spunk was putting out, and I guess that's what labels are about - being on the team. Artists like Will Oldham and Bill Callahan are some of my favourite songwriters, and just about everything Aaron has put out I find listenable in some way."

Like Will Oldham, Ladder performs under a pseudonym. His real name is Tim Rogers. But has this coincidence had any bearing on his experience as a musician? Not really, he explains. But when You Am I were at the height of their powers and Ladder was a teenager trying to win competitions they were tied to, entering said competitions under his real name did cause a few headaches. "I'd call up Waterfront Records for these phone competitions - trying to win a CD or poster or something - and they'd be like, 'What's your name?' And I'd be like, 'Tim Rogers.' And they'd be like, 'Get fucked.'"

It means that Ladder gets the odd unexpected phone call too. "I know Andy [Kent] from You Am I and he put me in his phone as Tim Rogers as well, so sometimes I get calls from him. But that's probably as much problem as it's been. I don't have any sort of identity crisis where I want to tackle Missy Higgins or do windmill guitar stuff."

Ladder, one of a slew of musicians to adopt a stage name, says it does serve a purpose other than alleviating confusion in the music industry. "It creates an element of show or character," he says. "You know, it's not Jack Brown or Jack Taylor. It does have an element of theatre. I can go on stage and it is different; I don't know how it's different but it is different. But there is a perception that it's different and that allows it to be. I haven't really done enough touring or shows to really explore what the full nature of the character is but I think that it does grow with time and it's changed a lot from where it started and I guess it will just continue to change."

Ladder will have an opportunity to get further in touch with his alter-ego when he kicks off a 12-date national tour starting in Sydney this week. With a full backing band in tow, he says he's excited by the prospect of changing the songs around. Some things, however, likely won't change any time soon, he adds. "There'll be more records and more making music,” he says. “I'm not going to shift to acting or have a career change or anything.”

That's Ladder being sardonic. In a testament to his astuteness as a performer, however, you'd barely know.

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Tour dates here.