Interview by Ali Williams
Hot Mulligan’s latest chat with HEAVY finds the band exactly where good bands tend to be after years of grinding away: confident, funny, slightly unhinged in the best way, and still refreshingly free of self-important rubbish. Speaking with Ali Williams ahead of their April return to Australia, the group as a band, have earned its growing reputation. These guys roll on in with the kind of dry humour and sideways banter that suggests Hot Mulligan are far more interested in taking the piss out of themselves than posing like tortured visionaries. Just like their music, their attitudes have pulse, and more importantly, it makes them feel like actual people rather than another touring act reciting the usual promo script.
The band are heading back to Australia after a warmly received first visit in 2024, this time with bigger rooms, stronger ticket sales, and enough demand to add a second Melbourne show after the first sold out. They speak about that first Australian run with genuine fondness, describing it as a leap into the unknown that paid off far better than expected. There is a clear affection for the smaller, more intimate venues too, with Hot Mulligan admitting they thrive in rooms where the barrier between band and audience is basically nonexistent. That detail says plenty. For all the upward momentum behind them, they still seem most at home when a show feels sweaty, immediate, and a little rough around the edges. Australia, clearly, gave them exactly that, and now they’re coming back for six shows as part of a schedule that barely lets them breathe before moving on to Singapore and then their first-ever tour of Japan.
They explain the the band’s history without wasting time trying to inflate it into some grand rock fairytale. Their beginnings were deeply DIY, gloriously unflashy, and stitched together from local bands, trial and error, and the kind of long-term persistence that most “overnight success” stories quietly leave out. They talk openly about how the band’s growth was gradual at first, before a pandemic-era release gave things a serious push and shifted them into a different gear. Even then, there’s no victory lap in the way they tell it. Hot Mulligan sound more amused than amazed by their own rise, which somehow makes it more impressive. They have been at this for over a decade, building audience trust the slow way, and the result is a band with real international pull that still behaves like it can’t quite believe people in London, Australia, and now Japan are yelling for them to show up.
Between the deadpan cracks about their past, the tongue-in-cheek nonsense about genre labels, and the general feeling that any one of them would happily derail a serious moment for a laugh, there is still a strong sense of gratitude running underneath it all. Hot Mulligan sound like a band fully aware of how lucky they are to be hauling their songs across the world, but also one that has worked hard enough to deserve every sold-out room and every passport stamp. That is really the takeaway here: not some neat genre tag or tidy career narrative, but a portrait of a band whose personality has grown right alongside its audience. They are funny without being flippant, sincere without getting sappy, and busy carving out a global path that still feels grounded in the scrappy spirit that got them moving in the first place. Go check them out and show them some lovin. Tickets, tour dates and information are available at www.ticketek.com.au as well as the bands page https://hotmulligan.band/pages/tour
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