by emma schoors
photo by dan kenny
When Inhaler first put pen to paper on It Won’t Always Be Like This years ago, there was no way to predict how punctual the words would become. Still, the band latched onto its timelessness, and the title track of their knockout debut album was born. Bright, loud, and unashamed, tracks like “Who’s Your Money On? (Plastic House)” and “Cheer Up Baby” are pops of thrashing color, while “My Honest Face” and “In My Sleep” make way for weighty bass lines and introspective lyrics. A hunger for live music has earned the Dublin-based band sold-out shows around the UK and US — we had the chance to talk to them all about it.
Did you all grow up around similar music, or are there varying musical backgrounds within the band?
EH: “We’ve got a lot of different inspirations. I think we kind of look at it as a Venn diagram of The Stone Roses, and Oasis, and Joy Division in the middle, and then we’ve got all these different little branches. The lads are really into rap and all that. I am as well, but I’m now in a Bob Dylan phase of my life whereas they’re in techno, so it’s an interesting little combination. I think we take that in our stride and we definitely try to replicate it in our music.”
What song from the album went through the most changes before reaching its final form?
RK: “That is a good question. I’m just trying to think of what the answer is.”
JJ: “‘Cheer Up Baby’ took the longest to get right. We were recording that for a long time.”
EH: “A really long time. Also, because it was kind of the most simply formed, and one of the oldest tunes, so I think we were second guessing ourselves a lot about it. We just made so many different versions of it, and in the end just ended up with something that was really similar to what we first came up with, and it worked, you know? I think you often do that when you have a lot of time in the studio just to experiment.”
How did it feel to hear the finished album for the first time?
RK: “I was going to say it’s hard to put it into words, but that actually wasn’t what I was going to say. I was going to say I can’t really remember when that was. I think we had a listen to it the day after it came out, maybe? Lads, I can’t remember. For the Jack Saunders thing, maybe? That was a good moment, where we all kind of enjoyed the album for the first time and we all sang the songs and stuff. There’s just a lot of hard work put into it, so I think it was just very rewarding. It’s nice to have something that you can kind of see after putting in a lot of work and seeing a result throughout the week of when it came out. Still, today, with people sharing it and enjoying the songs.”
What are you most proud of as a band?
EH: “This album, I think. But then often there’s times when we are driving home after a gig, where we just kind of turn to each other and go, ‘This is really nuts, what’s happening.’ So all those moments, you kind of just have that real proud thing. I think most of the time we’re just too focused on what we have to do next. We don’t really stop and think about it. When you do get a chance to, it’s pretty amazing.”