Inhaler Are Breaking Big. But They Still Want More.
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It hasn’t been the easiest trip to New York City for the members of Inhaler.
“We flew from Dublin to London and from London to New York,” says drummer Ryan McMahon, at the moment one of two band members seated in the back booth of a restaurant near Lincoln Center. “Even when we were in Dublin, our bass player, Rob, was saying, ‘Oh, my stomach doesn't feel quite right.’ That was about a good 14 hours before we landed.”
“But then he was fine on the flight, completely fine,” guitarist Josh Jenkinson chimes in.
By the next morning, things had worsened. “Our tour manager woke up to a bunch of calls and texts like, ‘It ain’t good, something's wrong,’” McMahon continues. “And now he’s had his appendix out, but he's okay. And then all of our gear went missing. But we're in the homestretch—we’re starting to win, I think.”
Things were more or less sorted out by the day after our late January conversation, when the young Irish foursome appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers to play “Love Will Get You There,” the second single from their second album, Cuts & Bruises (with a sub filling in for bassist Robert Keating, but at least playing their own, recovered equipment). In the UK, Inhaler—jangly and atmospheric in the alternative rock tradition, but with big hooks and choruses—are one of the biggest new bands to emerge in years. Their 2021 debut album It Won’t Always Be Like This entered at Number One on both the UK and Irish Official Charts, becoming the fastest-selling debut album on vinyl by any band this century and making them the first Irish group with a Number One debut in 13 years.
So despite the setbacks, the members of Inhaler, all in their early 20s, are in high spirits on this brisk day (at least the ones who aren’t in the hospital)—and why shouldn’t they be? Their previous visits to New York indicate a promising trajectory. Their first show here, in 2019, was opening for Blossoms at Elsewhere, an arts space in Brooklyn. Then came a slot at the tiny but prestigious Mercury Lounge, followed by a sold-out night—packed with kids screaming along to every lyric—at the 1,200-capacity Irving Plaza. They will return on St. Patrick’s Day, no less, to headline the 3,500-seat Hammerstein Ballroom.
Still, even in a world where streaming makes everything available simultaneously around the globe, making the leap from the UK to the US remains a huge challenge. The music economy changes, but England is still the same acreage as Alabama, with just a few key media outlets, and can be covered in a fraction of the time and cost it takes to conquer America from sea to shining sea.
“It’s the size and scale and how vast America is,” says Jenkinson. “It’s such an expensive step for a band to take. And if you don't have that audience already, it's such a risk. We know a lot of bands back home who are happy with what they're doing and feeling satisfied, but just can’t get to America. The market’s not there.”
With six people packed into a van, Inhaler learned that there are no shortcuts in the haul across the USA. “In some cases, we would end up doing twenty-hour drives just to cross states,” says McMahon. “But we embrace that. We have no problem wanting to try and be a big band. We want our music to reach as many people as possible and speak to as many people as possible, and in order to do that you do have to put in the grind. You have to play your fair share of small, dingy, sweaty little clubs.”
Inhaler’s American touring experience comes out in “If You’re Gonna Break My Heart,” the third and most recent single released ahead of Cuts & Bruises. “We went to places like Nebraska for the first time, and Nashville, we got to spend a little bit of time there,” says McMahon. “We were listening to a lot of American music, like the Band, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen. Country music had a little moment in our band's life, and country musicians are the best storytellers in music. So that was kind of a little homage to being on the road in America in a way, but it's also at heart a love song—about friends, really.”
And then, just as the order of tomato soup and fries is arriving, here comes vocalist and guitarist Elijah Hewson racing through the restaurant, a little late but energetic and caffeinated. He jumps in to compare the experience of making the two albums.
“The first one, we really didn't know what we were doing,” he says, “but with the second, we knew a little bit more how we wanted to come across. And the main thing was that we wanted to let the songs breathe, and put less info in. So we tried that—and it didn't really work. I think the songs we write are just big, anthemic-y things, and they demand a wide scope and a big sound. That’s just who we are.”
Inhaler credit producer Antony Genn—a musical polymath who played in an early line-up of Pulp, worked with Joe Strummer, and composes the music for Peaky Blinders—with helping them navigate the process. “He's such an eclectic mind, he's got a lot of things going on, and we've got such a wide array of tastes that we want to incorporate in our music, so it was perfect to have him,” says Hewson.
One of rock’s biggest cliches is that a band has its whole life to make the first album and then six months to make the second. The members of Inhaler admit they certainly felt the pressure—“Josh said he'd never want to make a second album ever again, and I couldn't agree more,” says McMahon—but also that the focus was welcome.
“It felt nice to make a record that was a snapshot in time,” says Hewson. “The first album was really done over six years. And you’re going through puberty, so a lot can change.”
Inhaler began in 2012 when Hewson, McMahon, and Keating met as pre-teens at St. Andrew’s in Dublin; three years later, they settled on a band name and recruited Jenkinson from another group. The early days were nothing auspicious—they describe themselves as the world’s worst heavy metal band or, as McMahon puts it, “feather metal.”
“When we were 13, the most uncool thing you could do was pick up a guitar, and we were all slagged about it,” says Hewson. “But you're discovering Motörhead and Metallica for the first time, and you're starting to learn an instrument and you go too fast rather than play too slow, because you get frustrated, and then you absolutely butcher it in the process. I mean, the first song we ever performed on stage was ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit,’ and we can't listen to that song to this day. But we learned, if you're gonna cover a song, maybe don't do the biggest rock song ever written? You need those embarrassing moments, that's how you get there.”
But there is an additional factor at work in the case of Inhaler: Hewson’s father is Bono—as in U2, global activist, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, jump-in-the-crowd-at-Live-Aid Bono. And if you didn’t recognize the name at first (Bono was born Paul Hewson), the facial and vocal resemblance is unmistakable. It’s a bit of a complicated spot at a time when the world is hotly debating the advantages enjoyed by “nepo babies” in show business (Elijah’s sister Eve Hewson, star of the AppleTV+ series Bad Sisters, recently poked fun at on the controversy, tweeting “2023 Goals: be successful enough to get recognised as a nepo baby.”)
Hewson and his bandmates seem to be at peace with the matter of his birthright. “I wouldn't make a very good architect, put it that way,” he says. “I think if you grow up around those people and that environment, and music is constantly talked about, that naturally must affect you in some way to go in that direction. If my dad was a doctor, maybe I'd be trained to be a doctor. I think Lily Allen said it really well—it's just entertainment, the real nepotism is in finance and politics. All we're doing is to try and put a smile on somebody’s face.”
They acknowledge that, especially at the band’s outset, the group drew some curiosity seekers. “In the early days,” says Jenkinson, “we had a few people coming for the wrong reasons, trying to get all creepy with Eli.” (“I saw your dad here in 1982—does he remember me?,” McMahon offers in imitation). In Sheffield, a Bono impersonator who calls himself Bongo even turned up—"actually quite a sweet guy,” says McMahon.
“We're not trying to shy away from it,” the drummer continues, noting that in Ireland, people tend not to be impressed by fame. “We're very grateful for the advantages, but sometimes it’s a perfect excuse to just have a laugh about it, as well. If anyone ever mentions it to us or brings it up, we’re just like, ‘Oh, he never told us about that. What are you talking about?’ “
“I don't really know,” concludes Hewson. “I can't see outside it. But for these lads, it must be fucking weird.”
But U2 are also too huge as a phenomenon to offer much in the way of life lessons to a young band. Inhaler point to indie stalwarts Arctic Monkeys—for whom they opened on tour and will rejoin as support in the spring—as a model, especially the continual evolution of their sound.
“We've been talking a lot about how being in a band is like being in a marriage,” says Hewson (though they each, slight and stylish and endearingly goofy, seem a long way from matrimony). “Sometimes you gotta spice things up in the bedroom. I guess the Arctic Monkeys are pretty good at spicing it up, keeping it interesting—God, I hope that's not the headline, or we’ll be off the tour.”
Inhaler will soon find out if they can reach that next level of success. Following the release of Cuts & Bruises, there’s a month of headlining dates in the US, they return to Europe for the Monkeys shows and then play their biggest UK headline shows to date at Manchester’s Victoria Warehouse and London’s Brixton Academy. This summer, they’ll share a bill with Harry Styles at Slane Castle and Sam Fender at St. James Park and hit big festivals including Reading and Leeds.
Recent years have seen signs of life in the popularity of rock n’ roll Stateside, but it’s come in the form of the pop-punk revival from Olivia Rodrigo and Machine Gun Kelly or the cartoony glam of Måneskin—nothing resembling Inhaler’s heartfelt power pop. But the band proudly embraces its sincerity. “I think it's hard to write a song that puts a smile on somebody's face,” says McMahon. “It's very easy to write a sad song.”
“Yeah, it can be corny, totally cheesy,” says Hewson. “But at the same time, I do feel like the world needs a little bit of that. Somebody’s gotta be the cheese. I always thought Oasis’ Definitely Maybe is far more powerful than [Radiohead’s] Kid A.” (“That’d probably be the distortion pedal,” mutters McMahon.)
And they point out that with bands like Idles and Dublin’s own Fontaines DC, guitar-based post-punk is having a moment in the UK. “I think people are getting sick of stuff that doesn't feel authentic,” says Hewson, “and the visceral sound of guitar is so different to what you hear on the radio. I think back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, rock music was becoming very, like, overblown, and then hip-hop was the cool underground thing. And now that seems like it's becoming overblown and commercial and all that. Guitars always come back.”
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