CENTS AND SENSIBILITIES

IN LESS THAN A YEAR, BRISBANE BAND MONTPELIER HAVE SCALED SOME INTERESTING HEIGHTS, SOME LESS LEGAL THAN OTHERS. SINGER DAVE BUTLER TELLS PAUL DONOUGHUE ABOUT THE RIDE.

A young band, less than six months old, ditches their tattered Bowen Hills rehearsal room for Hollywood. The four piece, Montpelier, with just a handful of shows behind them, set off to make a record with Kevin Augunas, the man behind the Cold War Kids albums.
“It was kind of random how it came about,” says singer Dave Butler of the audacious plan. “We were looking to do something really cool and we just had a demo together and sent it over and Kevin was interested. We didn’t have the highest expectations of someone like him wanting to work with us. It was quite a surprise, and quite a welcome one, that a producer like him would be interested in working with a tiny little band from Brisbane.”
Such a lofty experience – including the fact that the resulting EP was then mastered by Bob Ludwig, whose resume is a call sheet of rock’n’roll royalty – might lead some detractors to questions which major record label had discovered this clever, extremely agreeable young pop quartet and was pumping them full of cash. The answer is none.
“We sort of had to scrounge around for cash and go into a bit of debt,” Butler says of the month the band spent in Augunas’ North Hollywood studio working on their first EP. “It was an opportunity we couldn’t really turn down, so we just thought we would make it happen.”
Just months on and Montpelier are already back in the studio. They spent this past weekend in a Sydney studio working with The Church drummer Tim Powles ahead of the hometown launch this weekend of ‘The Rafters’, the first single from the EP.
“We have to work day jobs,” Butler says. “We pretty much just save as much as we can and put it together. It’s not as though we have unlimited funds, by any stretch of the imagination.”
Their interest in Augunas, whose straightforward, clean production gave Cold War Kids their bite and immediacy and worked for fellow Brisbane band Yves Klein Blue on their recent debut, seemed warranted when band and producer came together in the studio.
“His approach is just about trying to capture a really good performance and every time he asked about a take he was like ‘Did it feel good, did it feel right?’ Even if something sounded good, if we didn’t think it felt good, he’d just get rid of it.”
They also had some adventures outside the studio, with Augunas admirably playing the role of tour guide.
“We’d been there for about ten days and we hadn’t seen the Hollywood sign yet. So we told him and he was like ‘We have to fix this’,” Butler says.
As the five ascended the Hollywood hills, Augunas reassured them it wasn’t illegal to climb the letters – he had done it before.
“He takes us hiking up the hills and then off the path [saying] ‘By the way, if a ranger finds us, you guys do all the talking because I sound like I’m from around here’.”
An hour of bush bashing later, and they reach the sign.
“We [got] up there, sat on the first L, took video of it, we set off an alarm and the ranger came down and started shouting at us,” Butler says. “No one in LA would believe we did it.”
The self-funded four-week recording experience was both intense and important for the band, who will now concentrate on releasing and touring the EP they recorded in LA and working on a full length. 
“I was really excited by the prospect and then the closer we got to going I just started getting terrified by the whole experience. So it went from excitement to terror before we got there. I guess it was just [being] thrown into this crazy big town,” Butler says. “It was a great experience.”

WHO: Montpelier
WHAT: The Rafters EP (Independent)
WHERE & WHEN: The Zoo Friday Oct 8