'We haven't woken up on a chandelier yet

As Dublin's Inhaler unveil their huge new album, will the wild times finally come?

- LISA WRIGHT

Dublin quartet Inhaler may have already clocked up a UK chart topper in their 2021 debut It Won't Always Be Like This and a silver podium place with its follow-up, 2023's Cuts & Bruises, but in more personal ways, says 25-year-old frontman Elijah Hewson, this month's third act, Open Wide, feels like a new beginning. "I think there was definitely a lot of anxiety on the first two albums. It was so stressful. We'd never been in a studio before, we had to get on tour, we had to finish the singles. It was very highly strung whereas I think in this one we had an opportunity to go back to..." he pauses.

"There was a deadline, but it was more about not stressing about that stuff. It was a real joy to make.

I think that made a huge difference to me." You sense the place that the vocalist's mind is harking back to was that of a simpler time, when the band completed by bassist Robert Keating, guitarist Josh Bartholomew Jenkinson and drummer Ryan McMahon were just a bunch of teenagers, dropping out of the city's St Andrew's College to pursue their collective musical dream.

Since drip-feeding a string of early singles in 2019 and gaining public attention soon after (in no small part due to Hewson's father, Paul - or as he's otherwise known, Bono), the momentum around Inhaler has been swift and constant. In 2020, they placed fifth on the BBC's annual Sound Of poll and, alongside writing and recording their first two LPs, they've barely stopped touring since the pandemic; in 2023 alone, Inhaler opened up for Harry Styles, Pearl Jam, Arctic Monkeys and Sam Fender on top of their own headline dates.