Whether he’s blasting away behind the drum kit for beloved Sydney noise-rock duo Party Dozen or churning out distorted bass-lines for punk power trio Arse, there’s no mistaking the towering presence of Jonathan Boulet in the contemporary Australian music scene. The multi-instrumentalist even makes waves behind the boards, having served as a producer for bands like Body Type, These New South Whales, Totally Unicorn and Loose Fit.
The majority of people watching Boulet perform these days, however, will have no idea that the man making all that racket was one pegged to be the next big star of indie-pop as a solo artist. 2024 marks not only the release of Party Dozen’s fourth album Crime in Australia, but also serves as a milestone for Boulet’s solo career: His self-titled debut album has officially turned 15, having been originally released in 2009. Before the promotional cycle for Crime in Australia, Boulet spoke to the AU review for his first solo interview in nearly a decade to reflect on blog buzz, Berlin and hearing the Backstreet Boys in a stairwell… sort of.
Boulet began playing in bands throughout high school on Sydney’s northern beaches. On one particular fateful day, an eight-track digital recorder wound up in the music room. “I immediately started learning how to record on it,” Boulet recalls – speaking to the AU review from his inner-west home via Zoom. “We didn’t have the money to record our band, and we didn’t know who to go to or where, so it just became something I felt compelled to learn.” His first forays were, however, not exactly successful. “I saved up all my money to buy a microphone interface from overseas,” Boulet recalls. “I plugged it into an Australian power socket and it immediately exploded. I was so distraught! I didn’t know it needed a different power adaptor.”
Once the smoke had cleared, quite literally in this instance, Boulet learned the tricks of the trade – both with his bands and, tellingly, on his own. Having learned the keyboard from childhood, then bass and drums from being in bands, and then guitar almost by osmosis (“People kept leaving them at my house,” he recalls), Boulet was soon able to create entire full-band arrangements all by himself. “Whatever little ideas I had, I would just run and record them,” he says. “I took over the garage of the family home with all these instruments, and old mattresses for soundproofing. Eventually, at the end of high school, I had about 10 songs.”
Although his high-school bands had largely been influenced by emo, post-hardcore and math-rock, his solo music took quite a different route. “I’d gotten really into layered gang vocals and lots of percussion, with the drums really driving everything along,” he says. “Even though I was on my own, I was envisioning lots of people on stage with lots of instruments. I wanted it to have a big group feel, and for the songs to be big and all-inclusive.”
Boulet took his songs to FBi Radio, the city’s community radio station, on a burnt CD (a true sign of the times) in hopes of some support. Presenter Lee Tran was early on the bandwagon, playing tracks like ‘Continue Calling’ and ‘After All’, but it was one of the other tracks on that CD-R which ended up changing Boulet’s life. ‘A Community Service Announcement’ came about, per Boulet’s recollection, like any other night of songwriting. “I started with a little looping drone on guitar,” he recalls. “I started playing around with these little harmony chords, but every time I got a rhythm going I couldn’t play it in sequence. I had to record each bit separately because I wasn’t good enough on guitar yet.”
‘Announcement’ went on to become an indie staple of the late 2000s, as well as Boulet’s signature song as a solo artist. Its irresistible chorus and bouncing Soca rhythms lead to Boulet’s signing to Modular, the label run by Steve Pavlovic, and a world of exciting new opportunities – not bad for a kid who was about to turn 21. The first of these was to fly to New Zealand to shoot a music video, working with creative collective Special Problems to create something out of the ordinary.
“I really wanted to push stuff out there,” says Boulet. “I didn’t want a regular film clip. They had some sweet ideas – the weird digital faces stuff was all them. I remember when we were shooting the underwater parts, and they put all these weights in my hoodie so I would sink. They had a diver on had to swim down and pull me out once they called cut, and there were definitely a few close calls. I definitely hoped we didn’t need to do too many retakes.”
In the early days of YouTube virality, ‘Announcement’ picked up hundreds of thousands of views – thanks, in part, to a succinct endorsement from Kanye West – back in a time when that meant something. Sharing the clip on his long-defunct blog, Kanye Universe City, the man now known as Ye wrote in vintage all-caps: “WATCH THIS VIDEO, IT’S FUCKING AMAZING.” To this day, Boulet has no idea how he would have encountered the video. “He must have had a team working on all that tastemaking stuff,” he reasons. “I didn’t think it would be up his alley at all. It was interesting, to say the least.”
Boulet was also offered his first-ever tour around this time: A main support for a hyped new psych-rock prospect from over west, known as Tame Impala. Roping in a ragtag group of friends from skateparks and church groups, Boulet bought an acoustic guitar and squeezed all six band members into a van to tail Kevin Parker and co. across the country. “We were so green,” Boulet reminisces with a laugh. “I was literally learning how to play guitar live on-stage every night – I’d only ever played drums live before that. We were so enthusiastic, but I can only imagine the audience being like, ‘who the fuck are these children?’”
A run with The Middle East followed, where Boulet vividly recalls the band warming up every night by singing the Backstreet Boys‘ ‘Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)’ – “in perfect five-part harmony,” he emphasises. Boulet also recalls getting another gig with a band on the precipice of megastardom when he supported Mumford & Sons at Sydney’s Oxford Art Factory. “We were trying to get them to come to the skatepark in Bondi after the gig,” says Boulet. “They ended up getting cornered by all these label execs – everyone knew they were gonna be massive. It ended up being this pivotal moment – just standing there, thinking ‘Mumford & Sons aren’t coming skating at all’.”
Talk turns, naturally, to Boulet’s relationship with the music industry. Being young and impressionable, as well as a very marketable brand of boyish handsome to boot, you’d be forgiven in thinking Boulet was fending off label execs of his own as his solo career blossomed. In reality, however, Boulet remained with Modular until almost the very end, and was more than happy holding the proverbial reins himself. “I was pretty naïve to all that stuff,” he says.
“I never had a manager, and never had anyone guiding me. Modular would say I’d need to do this or that or whatever, but I was pretty free outside of that. I was booking my own tours, booking my own hire cars, driving myself there with the band. It never really occurred to me that there was a whole industry at play that would look after all that sort of stuff. All I wanted to do was make and play music. This opportunity had been given to me, so I just ran with it.”
Boulet kept up the solo momentum with his second album, 2012’s We Keep The Beat…, which featured what might be the most floor-tom-heavy song of the floor-tom indie era: The grammatically frustrating but musically elating ‘You’re A Animal’. Bigger venues followed, but Boulet had grown tired of what he described as “happy clappy” music and soon relocated to Berlin. There, he forged a more aggressive and heavy sound that shaped his third and final album, 2014’s Gubba.
“After the second record, it felt like that sound was getting pretty rinsed out,” says Boulet. “There were a lot of other bands doing it by that point, and they were doing cool things, but I felt like there was more for me to explore. I felt good about moving into a new style, and I thought people that liked my old stuff would be ready to move with me. Thinking about it 10 years on, though, I fully realise how alienating it was for people. It’s a weird record!”
Modular, on the verge of implosion, quietly dropped Boulet before Gubba came out. The album gained minimal traction and effectively halted the momentum of Boulet as a solo artist. It is, however, not a record without its fans: “One of the only offers I’ve had as a solo artist in the last few years was a promoter in Wollongong asking me to play this record in full,” Boulet laughs. “I told him I’d be playing it to him and the bar staff, so maybe let’s just leave that one.”
In 2015, Boulet formed Party Dozen with saxophonist Kirsty Tickle – herself a former indie kid, having played keyboards in Brisbane band Little Scout, who had moved to Berlin with Boulet in search of something heavier. Shortly after Boulet’s final solo shows at the start of 2016, the pair began gigging around Sydney – and the rest, as they say, is history. Though all of his musical projects over the last two decades present a wildly eclectic sonic palette, in Boulet’s mind it’s all connected.
“It all culminates in this combination of loving production, drums and instruments,” he says. “My whole upbringing was based around learning how to do music, picking up as many skills as I could along the way. Right up to now, when I’m making music with Party Dozen, I use all of that background and the resources I’ve learned from.” He’s tickled to find out that his solo music still has some 10,000 monthly listeners and that he has three songs that have clocked over a million streams: ‘Community’, ‘Animal’ and 2012’s ‘This Song Is Called Ragged’. As far removed as he is from that sound in 2024, Boulet expresses zero regret over what he achieved in the half-decade under his own name.
“I’m not ashamed of any of it,” he says. “I had a lovely time making that music, and it shaped who I am now. I consider myself so lucky to have had that time. I had a blast. Every now and then, someone will come up and tell me they listened to my songs in high school or at uni, and get all nostalgic over 2009, and it’s really nice having that little connection. It’s more and more foreign to me now, and I don’t listen to that music at all, but to be this far along in my career and have people still remember is really lovely.”
Party Dozen’s Crime In Australia is out on Friday, September 6th via Grupo. Pre-order the album and buy tickets to their upcoming national tour by clicking here.
Photo Caption: L-R: Jonathan Boulet of Jonathan Boulet (Credit: Graham Denholm/WireImage), and Jonathan Boulet of Party Dozen (Credit: Sam Brumby).
