Hot Milk

Hot Milk always knew that when the time came to make their debut album, they had to be ready for it. It would be their loudest statement yet of who they are and what they stand for, an opportunity to launch themselves into the upper echelons of the British rock scene. It had to be right – after all, they only had one shot at it.

They took the scenic route towards their debut, letting themselves blossom over the course of three EPs – 2019’s Are You Feeling Alive?, 2021’s I JUST WANNA KNOW WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I’M DEAD, and 2022’s The King And Queen Of Gasoline. This constant stream of releases meant that Hot Milk were never away from the spotlight – or the stages they call home – for long. Their rise kept accelerating, taking them to stadium support slots with Foo Fighters, the Reading main stage and, most recently, a pair of headliners at London’s iconic Koko and the 1,500-capacity O2 Ritz in their hometown. Crucially, however, they were giving themselves space to find themselves as artists.

“We used the three EPs to learn what we were good at, what we liked, what we didn’t like, what we were good at, and what we wanted to explore,” explains co-frontman and guitarist Jim Shaw. “We always wanted to do a trilogy of EPs that would explore different sides of us,” adds fellow co-frontwoman and guitarist Han Mee. “We did a lot of growing up, I think, [since] the first EP and we're completely different people now.”

The irony is, however, that when the time came to make their debut, the band almost weren’t in the state for it. They had just spent three months on the road in America hoping to connect with the grassroots fanbase Han had noticed rapidly growing on social media (and squeezing in a spot on Jimmy Kimmel along the way).

It wasn’t exactly glamorous, however. “The three months weren’t easy,” Jim notes. “There were hiccups all the way through.” While they were feeling the love from the shows, it wasn’t quite enough to silence their impostor syndrome or quell their steadily mounting homesickness, and inevitably, such a long stretch of shows took an equal toll on their bodies as much as their minds.

Still, they needed an album. They were warned that the momentum that they had spent years building could falter if they didn’t put out a debut that would consolidate it. Despite that, and despite the years they had invested into readying themselves for making the album of their lives, they were both emotionally and physically spent, and the pressure of doing themselves justice on their debut further weighed them down.

“I went into a session in LA when we were starting writing and I got in there and I cried my eyes out,” Han recalls. “I was saying to my manager, ‘I need to go home. I'm burnt out, I've done three months on the road, I've not been home, I don’t know what I'm writing about. I've not had time to think about this album. I was ill because I was so run down.”

Lying on the sofa in tears, Han emptied out everything she was feeling to Zakk Cervini, who lends some co-production on select tracks, including her worry that she didn’t know what she was going to write about. Jim however, saw differently. Instead, he saw a reservoir of thoughts and emotions that the band could pour into their music. All the inspiration that they need was right there, waiting for them.

The first song that spawned from their LA writing sessions was ‘Breathing Underwater’, a song, in Jim’s words, about “feeling like you’re absolutely swamped, drowning in your own self-doubt,” which captures Hot Milk, and especially Han, at their lowest ebb.

“I wanted to run away. I felt like diving into the sea and never coming back up. I was like, ‘I don’t want to die, but I don’t want to be alive’,” she explains. “I didn’t want to feel anymore – it was all too painful to feel. I felt like a failure but I also felt a lot of pressure and I just didn’t really know what to do or where to put that.”

Creating art from that darkness, however, turned out to be a silver lining. “We got a beautiful song out of it. “That’s why art is really important – it allows you to get all those feelings out there.”

That mindset also inspired the title choice. A Call To The Void is the English translation of the French phrase l’appel du vide, referring to the brain’s trick of spotting opportunities to die. It’s the eerie jolt that is felt when you stand waiting for a train and the thought that you could jump, and end your life in a heartbeat, intrudes in your head. It’s that brief moment of being reminded of the fragility of existence.

Writing ‘Breathing Underwater’ enabled Hot Milk to break through. While still in LA, they wrote three other songs in the space of three days, and all of them, including ‘Breathing Underwater’, ended up being chosen as singles. In a way, this sudden reversal of fortune was typical for them. “We don’t do things the normal way,” Han asserts. “Stuff comes out of the woodwork out of nowhere in a way that I don’t understand sometimes. I’m not going to argue with it.”

The rest of the singles walk on a tightrope between the humorous and the serious, brimming with what might be called positive nihilism. They’re not so much finding the light in the dark as they are laughing because if they don’t, they’ll cry. Take the thunderous ‘Horror Show’, for example. “This is kind of like an admittance of ‘You know what, might not be everybody’s cup of tea. Who cares?’ It’s celebrating the weird,” says Han. That defiance, however, doesn’t necessarily come from a place of self-love. “What’s the worst you can think about me?” she continues. “I’ve already thought that about myself.”

‘Party On My Deathbed’, meanwhile, fizzes with life but is ultimately powered by a sense of reckless abandon. “It’s the idea that you only live once, so you might as well live it to your absolute fullest,” begins Jim, before Han elaborates on the idea that wanting to party till you die might not just be celebratory but destructive.

“At the time that I was writing, I was becoming really involved in the underworld of Manchester and staying out till God knows what time in the morning. You don’t care anymore, you don’t care about yourself or what happens to you. You just keep going.”

Despite this, however, it’s characteristically tongue-in-cheek, with a proudly British sense of humour too inspired by some of the band’s more left-field influences. “Some of the older Slowthai and AJ Tracey lyrics are quite clever in the way they say stuff using very British slang, with twisted metaphors around everyday British life,” says Jim. “That’s kind of like what we’ve explored.”

The more alt-pop inspired ‘Bloodstream’, meanwhile, was made for creating moments on the big stages the band have always aspired to reach. “I love that song, I just think it’s a party,” Han says. “It’s my favourite because it makes me feel happy. It’s a feel good song – it’s something we’ve never done before. I felt proud of that; we really pushed ourselves with it. I think it’ll be fun to play live.”

The rest of the album was written in two other locations. Some of it was put together in a shipping container in Manchester (“We can rent them out really cheap!” Han chips in), including one of the album’s goofiest songs, ‘Alice Cooper’s Poolhouse’, which features a skit at the end from the Godfather of Shock Rock himself.

“We were sat in the studio and we had the idea of ‘Let's do all the verses with all the names of his songs, ‘Poison’, ‘Bed Of Nails’, [et cetera],” says Jim. It was intended as a joke, but wound up turning into a better song than they expected. Thanks to a few handy connections, they got him to record the skit for the end – and happily, he rather liked the track as well. “It was a mushroom trip that never ended,” Han jokes.

Other parts were written in Sweden, with a producer with a background in dance music brought on board. It enabled the band to explore elements of EDM and drum and bass that had fascinated them for years and integrate them more fully into the Hot Milk sound – rather fitting, considering their roots in a city with strong ties to the genre. Jim has a background working in warehouse projects, while for Han, raves are a major part of her Friday nights. “I would say I’m more into dance than rock music at the moment, but rock music will always be my first love, but I think it’s really important for our music to reflect who we are now as people.”

Another major aspect of Hot Milk’s sound that has helped them to hone their sense of uniqueness is Jim’s role behind the production desk. Originally, it was a role he took up out of necessity, with the band writing their earliest songs were written in bedrooms where they had limited resources, but over time, it became something he embraced. Consequently, he’s produced everything Hot Milk has released, including A Call To The Void. Although, nowadays, they’ve worked alongside other producers, they’ve found that nothing sounds quite like Hot Milk as when someone from Hot Milk is steering the ship.

Of course, it comes from a place of passion too. “I’m just a bit of a nerd,” he says with a smile. “I love fiddling with things and learning how things work. I absolutely love doing it.”

The most important thing for the band, however, is that these songs are written to scream from the speakers of the stage, and for their refrains to be screamed back at them by the adoring, tight-knit community they’ve built. “Live is where I’m happiest, live is where it’s home,” says Han. “We wrote songs with the intention of people going off, making you feel good, opening the pit up, letting go, crying, getting on your mate’s shoulders. It’s been like, ‘What do people want to feel at a show?’”

She smiles. “It’s church for us.”