ep launch

Today’s edition of Rave Magazine has a feature on Montpelier’s EP Launch on Friday 5 March. Here’s what they said:

DAVE BUTLER of local stadium-aspiring indie types MONTPELIER tells ERIK VELAND that they really love Australian producers after all.

On returning to Australia from recording, the boys from Montpelier (née The Quills) were met with some skepticism and jealousy from a few local pundits. Were they just trust fund kids with money to throw at big name producers at a whim? Worse: Were Australia and our producers just not good enough for them? Frontman Dave Butler explains:

“We didn’t get it a lot, but there were some who said ‘Aren’t Australians good enough for you?’, but that’s not what we had in mind at all. We were actually starting a record with a producer down in Sydney. There are some really talented people in Australia with some amazingly creative ideas. We just got presented with an opportunity to work with a great producer who has worked with some bands we really like and we took it – as you do. It was unexpected when it came up and I think we would have been stupid to say no.”

This all came about from sending Andrew, the band’s keyboardist and manager, over to SXSW, to get an idea of what was happening over in America. At a bar, he met an ex-Queenslander there working in music PR in New York. She connected him with producers who were interested in working with them.

“This was a massive shock from having no expectations at all. We decided to work with Kevin [Augunas; Cold War Kids, Magnetic Zeroes, Yves Klein Blue] and a few months later we packed our stuff together and flew to LA.”

The LA production was for their forthcoming EP. But what is coming out of the Sydney recordings?

“Not sure. We are doing pre-production on some tracks and demoing some other tracks. It might be an EP, it might turn into an LP. We are just going to get the songs ready, record them and then see what happens.”

If you have ever attended a Montpelier live show, you know they always sound like they are playing for 50,000 no matter how many are actually in attendance. Surely we’ll be seeing them playing a stadium in the near future?

“(laughs) I wouldn’t get ahead of ourselves too much. There is only a handful of bands in the world that have been able to pull that one off. I think when we play a show it doesn’t really matter where it is or who it is for, we really just try and have fun and play the best we can. Sometimes the coolest gig is when you are playing for 20 people who don’t know who you are, but by the end of the gig they are loving your songs. You can have a blast whether you are playing for 20 or a couple of hundred.”

MONTPELIER launch their self-titled debut EP on Friday Mar 5 at The Zoo, supported by Tin Can Radio and Timothy Caroll.

You can read the feature online here: http://www.ravemagazine.com.au/content/view/19437/30/ or check it out below (we’re sneakily on the front cover):