Hot Milk On Touring Australia & Refusing To Sell Out: 'We’re Never Complacent'

Emily Wilson

Ahead of their upcoming headline tour of Australia, the Manchester duo discuss their fiery relationship and their dynamic music.

Hot Milk(Credit: Greta Kalva)

Hannah Mee, of the riotous self-described “emo power-pop” band Hot Milk, is currently sprawled across her bed in Manchester. It is 10 pm, and after a long day in the studio, she is blinking herself awake and reminiscing on how she and her musical partner in crime, Jim Shaw, first met.

“I mean, it’s not my proudest story,” she chuckles. “Basically, we met initially on Tinder. We were obviously both single, working in music.” She spotted him on the app and instantly recognised him from the venues she had been tirelessly working at - she was a promoter, and he was a lighting director.

“We were together for four years, me and Jim, before we ever started Hot Milk. And then, towards the end of our relationship, we started writing music together. We had some bad things happen in our lives, and we ended up breaking up, but he is still my best friend ever.”

They first properly met in Manchester at a bar across the road from where Hannah was living at the time. “And I don’t know, I’ve not been able to get rid of him since.”

“I’m like a bad smell,” Jim quips.

Clearly, Hannah says, music has worked better for them than romance. “We’ve been in the band longer than we were ever together, you know what I mean?”

Hannah and Jim first formed Hot Milk in 2018. Since then, they have signed to the British indie label Music For Nations, released three EPs and two critically acclaimed albums, played the likes of Lollapalooza and Download Festival, and toured the world with acts such as Foo Fighters and You Me At Six, all - crucially - whilst never forgetting their Manchester roots.

“The city is everything to me,” Hannah says emphatically. “So, it’s definitely become part of our music and identity in every which way.”

“We’ve got a rich heritage of music in Manchester and the north of England, and so we pull on that a lot,” Jim says. “There’s a big electronic influence in our music, and that probably comes from the fact that me and Hannah have spent countless nights up until five in the morning at The Warehouse Project.”

“Yeah, dance music is a huge part of our lives,” Hannah chimes in. “It’s what we do when we come home from tour, and we’re sick of rock music.”

She touches on the fact that Manchester is a deeply working-class city. “And we’re both working-class people.”

“It instils an ethic in you,” Jim adds. “You’re never getting a handout or taking anything for granted.”

Being a band based in the United Kingdom is something they both - laughing and grimacing - describe as astronomically expensive.

“I don’t think we’ve ever made money from an American tour in our lives,” Hannah says.

“It’s getting harder, obviously, with the world going to shit, and with some countries trying to fucking bully other countries,” Jim expands. “Even trying to get over to Australia or Japan, it’s becoming a fucking nightmare.”

The prices of flights skyrocket higher and higher every time they look, because, as war rages in the Middle East, stopovers in Abu Dhabi or Dubai are no longer an option.

“I’m not going to say that that is the worst thing ever, because obviously people are being displaced and people are having an unjust war in their own countries,” Hannah says. “But ultimately in the Western world, art is the first thing to fall when things get a bit spicy. Obviously, let’s not forget that while we can’t travel to a show, there’s people fucking dying. So you’ve got to have perspective.”

Over the years, Hot Milk have become mainstays on the festival circuit and have garnered a reputation for their thrilling live performances. When people go to see Hot Milk live, they expect high-octane chaos and electrifying energy every single time.

“We always strive to put on the best show possible. We’re never complacent,” Jim says. “There can always be room for improvement, so I think we’re quite self-critical. When we play, we always try to feed off crowd energy. Without that, it falls flat and becomes an uphill struggle.”

Hannah adds, “I would say that the audience is the fifth member of the band, and if I’m not getting what I need from them on a certain song, that song gets put on the chopping block. I am all about making sure that they are feeling what I want them to feel, and that is how I craft a set.”

Hot Milk are currently gearing up for a headline tour of Australia, scheduled to play in Melbourne, Brisbane, and Sydney in May with special guests Bad/Love. At the mention of the tour, they both jump to discuss their affection for Australia, literally talking over one another like siblings.

“I love Perth,” Hannah says (and is devastated that they couldn’t quite financially justify playing there this time round). “I lived in Sydney for a bit. I was with an Australian person for many years. My grandparents live in Melbourne, in Geelong.”

“Melbourne reminds me a bit of home,” Jim says. “I feel like Manchester and Melbourne are quite intertwined, apart from Melbourne having better weather, obviously.”

“I’ve spent a lot of time in Australia over the last however many years I’ve been alive. It does feel somewhat like a second home,” Hannah says. “I think it’s the closest culturally to the UK, which is what I like about it. It feels like we’re playing with our cousins.

“They understand us, which doesn’t always happen in America. It’s almost like they need permission in America to let loose, whereas Australian fans are fucking ready to go just like we are.”

Hot Milk relies totally on Hannah and Jim’s support of and trust in one another. They are partners in crime, partners in collaboration - the kind of relationship that can be intimate, frustrating, overwhelming, and messy. How have they learned to best navigate artistic and personal tensions over the years?

“We just yell at each other,” Hannah snorts.

“Our manager’s got a saying: every song’s an argument. Essentially, the songs are just the two of us hashing it out.”

“And if we don’t want to do something, we just won’t do it.”

They are currently deep into the songwriting fugue of their third album, and Jim thinks they’ve gotten better at allowing each other to explore, though Hannah still struggles with overt self-criticism during the process of creating together.

“I have to feel like there’s a bit of my heart in it before I like it,” she says. “I hate it till I don’t. I’m so bipolar with everything that I like.”

“Which is why I think with this, we’re giving things a bit of breathing room. We’re not shooting stuff down as quickly as we maybe would have last time,” Jim says. “At the end of the day, I think we’re just honest with each other, and I think that’s the best thing to be.”

“I do think people are shocked by the way that we speak to each other sometimes,” Hannah says, flashing a cheeky grin.

“When our tour manager first came on tour, he pulled me aside and was like, ‘Is the band going to break up? You two are at each other’s throats.’”

“I don’t think we notice when we do it,” Hannah admits, and explains that they both come from argumentative households.

Jim shrugs. “We squabble like family.”

This clearly translates well to their music, which has a defiant edge. Their music is also deeply political, largely informed by Hannah’s Master’s Degree in Politics, and targets issues such as the climate crisis, gun violence, and queer rights.

“I was like, I am in a learned position on the subject, so I feel like I have to discuss it. The last album, Corporation P.O.P., essentially got blacklisted from all mainstream radio in the UK because of it, which was not great for our career,” she says with a pained laugh.

The fourth single from the album, The American Machine, for example, trades in lyrics such as, “Sending love from DC to the Middle East, with a kiss and a hug and an F15.” They definitely weren’t being subtle about their opinions on American foreign policy.

“I would never want anyone to ever question my morality when it comes to where I stand on political stuff, and I think that’s now a line in the sand when it comes to our second album,” she shares. “We sacrificed a lot to do that album, so I don’t think anyone could ever question where we stand now. But I think, moving forward, for my own safety of mind, being a sensitive human being, I need a record of escapism next.”

She feels that, at the end of the day, the people who listen to their music are on the same page when it comes to the thorny state of the world. “Right now, I’m so burnt out, as a lot of people are. The next step for us will be to create a piece of fantasy so that we can recharge ourselves, and then we will be able to fight the battles when we need to.”

Corporation P.O.P., she explains, “was a time and place. I think I was a bit angrier then, and now I’m just so downtrodden. I honestly feel so exhausted. I think a lot of people do.”

Now, Jim equates success as a band with stability.

“When I was a kid, I had a dream that I would play Leeds, Reading, tour the world. I’m doing that now,” he admits. “What’s the next dream? I want to be the biggest band in the world, but it’s kind of unstable for me to think that that’s where I need to be.

“It’s good to have aspirations and push yourself, but I think for us, especially getting older, I think it’s just having the ability to carry on what we have been doing with a stable financial bed.”

For Hannah, success looks slightly different. “For me, it’s being at peace knowing that I’m good at what I do. Because I don’t really feel like that yet. I don’t feel that I’ve really hit the nail on the head with music and songwriting.”

At the end of the day, all Hannah wants is a reflection that makes her proud. “I want to look at myself in the mirror and go, ‘You did good there.’ I want to have peace with where I’m at in the world.”

Hot Milk will tour Australia in May 2026. Tickets can be purchased on the Frontier Touring website.

Presented by Frontier Touring