Filling The Void With HAN MEE And JIM SHAW From HOT MILK

Interview by Kris Peters
By sheer virtue of the fact they were hand-picked by Foo Fighters
for the Australian support slot, Hot Milk just HAVE to be a good
band.
But it's not until you sit back and listen to the band that it
becomes evident that they are actually shit hot and if the Fooeys
hadn't chosen them as support then they probably wouldn't have been
doing their job right.
Comprised of co-front people Han Mee and Jim Shaw who grew up
together in Manchester, Hot Milk have captured people's attention
on a global scale, amassing 50 million global streams across 3 x
EPs and playing the likes of Reading + Leeds, Download,
Lollapalooza, Rock Am Ring and more.
Just looking through their brief, but busy career trajectory tells
the true story of success, with Hot Milk deliberately restricting
themselves to three EPs initially as a way of discovering their
sound and musical identity and allowing time to fully flesh out
their vision, rather than rushing to put out a full album.
That planning and patience was realised earlier this year with the
release of their debut album A Call To The Void, which has elevated
Hot Milk even further into the sonic stratosphere.
Thus, their current Australian run of shows, not just supporting
Foo Fighters, but also containing two headlining shows in Melbourne
and Sydney.
HEAVY caught up with Han and Jim not long before their second
headlining show, which is tonight in Sydney.
"It was great," Han enthused when asked how the first show of the
tour went. "But we're changing the set because we got angry at
ourselves. It's one of them, it's like, when you're playing with
the Foos you just have to do your best and have fun doing it.
You've gotta absorb those moments. It's the stuff dreams are made
of, really."
We press Han on what she means by saying they got upset at
themselves.
"We're perfectionists, and we didn't play the best set we could
play," Jim chimed in.
"We basically came off the back of our own headlining tour," Han
continued, "and didn't have time to think about what we were gonna
do for the Foo Fighters. We kind of did a stripped-back version of
that, and then we realised we need to do something specific for
this crowd and specific for the Foos."
In the full interview, Han and Jim talk about the magnitude of
sharing a stage with Foo Fighters, having to shut that out and
focus on the task at hand, playing their own headlining shows, the
emotional difference between playing to tens of thousands with FF
one night and then playing to a more intimate pub crowd the night
after, what to expect from their shows, their debut album and how
it was received, how they planned the album over three EPs and
more.