Montero

Montero is artist and musician Ben Montero. Montero operates in the rich widescreen soft rock tradition, updating the romantic classicism of golden era love songs with a psychedelic pop brush. Montero's music evokes the extended soundscapes and textures of 70s prog, the easy listening adult weirdness of Jimmy Webb and Burt Bacharach, and the sports arena pounding of vintage MOR rock - sometimes all in the space of one song. With an emphasis on clear vocals, soaring melodies, lush instrumentation and dreamy glam pomp, Montero ventures into gently surreal realms of romance, yearning, and wonder.
 

New Montero album Performer was released by Chapter Music in Feb 2018, co-produced with Jay Watson of Pond/Gum/Tame Impala and Grammy winning engineer Riccardo Damian, and recorded at Mark Ronson's London studio. The album has been covered by The Fader, Stereogum, Noisey, Les Inrocks (France), Clash (UK) and elsewhere.

As a visual artist, Ben's comic-based style highlights the universality of small human moments via a cast of furry or slimy friends. His art has graced album covers, t-shirts and posters for Mac Demarco, Courtney Barnett, Kurt Vile, Pond and others. His Bjenny Montero page has more than 262,000 fans. 

Ben first came to prominence in the mid-00s as one of the key songwriters in Melbourne next big things, Byrds-inflected psych pop band Treetops. Many people walk the streets of Melbourne still singing the choruses of Treetops songs like Pony In the Morning or Gospel. Ben played for a few years in groups such as TM Band and The Brutals, before reinventing himself earlier this decade as Montero. Debut album The Loving Gaze emerged in 2013, and Montero played Australian shows with The War On Drugs, Kurt Vile, John Maus, Yeasayer and many more.

These days Ben is a vagabond, supporting himself through his visual art, but rarely staying in one place long enough to pay rent. In recent years he has had exhibitions in London and Melbourne, played live shows in New York with backing from members of MGMT, hiked Spain's epic Camino trail twice, and discovered a passion for Athens, Greece.                    

Montero toured UK/Europe with Mac DeMarco in 2017, returned for a headline tour in 2018 including a performance at Barcelona’s Primavera Festival.