Ireland’s Inhaler have just released their (rather excellent) debut album, It Won’t Always Be Like This – so, we caught up with them for a (rather excellent) chat about the new record, how they’ve coped with the last eighteen months, and the death of genres.
Let’s go back to like the start of 2020. You were a young, hotly tipped band – and then the pandemic happened. How hard was it for you guys to adjust to it, both as a band and as individuals?
Eli (Hewson, frontman): ‘It was as hard as it gets. I remember having words with the rest of the guys. We had a US tour cancelled in March, which was pretty devastating – but that was the last time I got upset about something being canned. Since then, I’ve put up this hard wall: we’ve had about a million things cancelled and you just have to go ‘OK, this is what we’ve got there’.’
‘It was hard, though. We’ve gone straight from being in school to being in the band. Then, luckily for us, things took off fairly fast and we were on a really good trajectory. We were playing big venues and it was really exciting.’
‘Then, when the lockdown happened, it was like ‘alright, lads, it’ll be one week off and it’ll be grand’. We really thought that we’d be back in a couple of weeks – and then here we are, a year and a half later, and suddenly, it’s like ‘it was good while it lasted, lads – now let’s get back to college’.’
‘It did feel like we were all gonna have to start getting other jobs. It’s easy to forget, but at the beginning of the pandemic, people were really scared. Like, I remember sitting around the table with my mum listening to the five o’clock news and they were giving the daily death tally – and it felt like we were in World War Two or something.’
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Was there ever a worry that this forced situation would lead to you making a more insular and retrospective debut album than you might have otherwise produced?
Rob (Keating, bassist): ‘That’s exactly what happened. I think, if it wasn’t for the pandemic, this album was going to be even more anthemic than it turned out to be. I think during the pandemic we did find ourselves just riding a little bit more. We made more mid-tempo and darker music, and that actually paid off in the end. It added a duality to the album; sure, there are big choruses, but there are also hints of sadness and seriousness. I think that’s important to have after a year like this, ’cause no one wants to be told that everything is gonna be alright. We can’t guarantee that, but we can keep the optimism.’
Eli: ‘That’s we like the title of the album as well. You can’t help but write about the world around you. I think before the pandemic we were a lot younger and chirpier, and we just wanted to be out on stage all the time. But the pandemic really forced us to mature, and I think we just started wanted to write about the world around us a lot more.’
‘There’s a lot more duality now, and not just to the album – to us as people. Before all of this happened, we felt a bit invincible: everything was going so well for us for a good while, and it’s easy to get swept up in it. So, I think it was a sobering moment for us – it grounded us and brought us back to reality, and then we learned that we needed to work harder and there’s more stuff we could have been doing to benefit our band.’
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Would you say that you’re naturally hopeful people?
Eli: ‘There’s definitely a sense of hope in all of us. Maybe it’s an Irish thing. We’ve gotten through this pandemic together, and if one of us was constantly being a Debbie Downer and I think we would have probably not made it through it all – let alone made the album. But I think, collectively, we would rather keep each other going now than call it quits.’
‘We’ve got a good balance. Ryan is very, very good at being optimistic, and I sometimes can be a little bit the other way and a bit too pessimistic. So, we complement each other nicely.’
Out of all the songs you’ve ever written, why did you re-record ‘It Won’t Always Be Like This’ for the album?
Rob: ‘We’ve changed since we first recorded that song: not just as musicians, but as people. I guess we wanted it to represent where we were now – that song meant something completely different before the pandemic, and now it’s taken on this whole other meaning.’
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You’ve always struck us as a band with a wide range of influences. How did these influences develop through the writing and recording of this album? And were there any influences who were more explicit at the start of the writing process than they were at the end?
Eli: ‘I think I’m more the latter. We had a lot of influences that really meant a lot to us in the early days but weren’t so prevalent towards the end. As we got into recording the album, we just had less time to listen to music – so the influences that were there just got pushed a little further to the back of our minds as time went on.’
‘When we started, we were influenced by bands like Joy Division and The Stone Roses – but now, we don’t sound anything like those bands. We started out as a band that just wanted to write big indie rock songs, but I don’t think that’s what we want to do forever.’
‘I just think that genres are becoming a thing of the past. Back in school, all our friends just used to listen to one genre at a time; but now you go on Spotify and people just have playlists of great songs. It’ll go from rap, to dance, to pop, to indie – it’s limitless, and I find that really exciting. Fashion goes out of style, but great songs never do.’
