In the early Manchester morning, Hannah Mee and Jim Shaw, two halves of punk/rock group Hot Milk, are keenly looking ahead to their upcoming Australia tour in May. Returning to Australia after their last visit in 2023, the group is back on familiar ground.
“It feels like a second home”, Hannah describes. “I know the streets, which bars we like, which coffee shops we like…so it’s nice for us to go back to those places.”
After headlining some shows here in 2023 and supporting the Foo Fighters, the group can feel the difference this time around, describing the larger rooms and shows they’ll be playing. They’re preparing to come back to familiar Aussie crowds, who remind them of their UK fans.
“I think they’ve got the same thing wrong with them as we do”, they both chuckled as they reminisced over the Australian crowds. “We love a party”.
The two met back in a bar in their hometown of Manchester in 2018. “We both worked in music, but we didn’t know we both played”, Jim describes. “We’d both been in bands together when we were much younger… both played some pubs”.
But it wasn’t until the pair had moved in together that their dynamic shifted. Hannah recalls that “one night we just had a bottle of wine and started writing some tunes.” Hot Milk quickly became an escape from their previous jobs, and it wasn’t long until they had the rest of their group come into the picture. Jim recalls the ease of this saying, it was “pretty seamless to connect”.
As a Manchester-bred group, it was inevitable that we chatted about some other iconic groups that have come out of the UK city. “I watched the Buzzcocks when I was younger”, a punk band who were formidable for Hannah growing up, as “a bit of an outlier” in Manchester, as there weren’t a lot of other punk bands at the time from the city.
Not only the iconic groups from the city, but also the infamous festivals that happen across the country. “It’s kind of like a right of passage growing up where we’d go to Leeds festival”. Jim mentioned the “studded rock lineup” they saw, which included Blink-182, Paramore and Rage Against the Machine, which fuelled their passion for the music. “I saw so many bands that weekend and just thought, I wanna do that.”
They’ve done a full 180, now performing at festivals across the world, with UK festivals being where they “cut their teeth and learnt how to be a band”, said Hannah. “We invented them, we do em’ best”.
Looking back to their sound in the early years the group said they lent more into the ‘pop-py’ side as Jim said they were probably ‘pop-ifying ourselves more than we’d like to’. But now they’ve learnt to lean into what’s authentic to them.
‘We’re writing more of what we want to write..that’s the thing about music, you have to keep evolving.’ And they’re continuing to evolve, already back in the studio writing their next album following their 2025 release Corporation P.O.P. . “We’re writing it basically on our own, without a producer this time..pretty much just how we started the band”.
Hannah and Jim say they’re hoping to release their next album “early to mid-next year.” They’re taking their time with the album, enjoying the slower pace of writing and really making sure what they’re creating is right for them. “Bands used to take years and years to write an album”. While it’s easy to get caught up in the fast-paced consumption we’re living in, they’re making an effort to stay authentic to themselves and their fans through the work they’re creating.
Hot Milk tour dates
Wednesday 20th May – 170 Russell, Melbourne
Thursday 21st May – Metro Theatre, Sydney
Saturday 23rd May – Crowbar, Brisbane
Tickets for Hot Milk’s Australia tour in May are on sale now. Get your tickets HERE
photos supplied by PR
