Irish Rock Band Inhaler Looks Forward to the Future

Ireland’s lockdown measures have been particularly brutal over the past year. How’ve you guys gotten through it?

Elijah: It was like someone cut off our legs. It was horrible. The scariest part of it was not being able to gig, feeling like we were losing some trajectory with the band. And in a way it just made us work harder. Like, ‘well, the only thing we can do is work on the album’. If we had come off tour and gone straight into recording the album like was originally the plan, people would have been a bit burnt out and maybe not inspired. When we came into the studio after a lockdown…there was a lot of pent up energy, that’s for sure.

Have those pandemic anxieties bled into your work?

Elijah: You can’t help but write about something like that. I think the songs pre-Covid were maybe about more innocent things, like the girl that you like, and relation- ships, and being a teenager and that kind of thing. When the pandemic hit, the lyrics became a little broader but it still had that kind of optimistic innocent thing. “When It Breaks” was kind of like my political statement but it’s not even a political song. It’s kind of more just an analysis of where we are and the change that’s going on in the world but we’re not overly political.

Do you feel pressure to be more political in your music or in your interviews?

Elijah: I think even if the songs aren’t about the big subjects directly, they are indirectly about them because they’re about the experiences that we had as teenagers. There’s a song on the album called “My King Will Be Kind” about polarization. People our age are swept into these crazy, extremist groups so easily. And everybody thinks that they’re an expert. So if it’s not directly inspired by current events, it’s indirectly inspired by it. It’s a weird one, too. We always wrote music for escapism. So we don’t really want to talk about any of the issues. I guess it’s not the best mindset for change. But at the same time, I think there’s also value in bands and in music that kind of take you away from it all.

Josh: There’s a space for that in the world.

Ryan: I especially think when gigs come back, it’s gonna be universally just a celebration. I think people are going to rejoice, and it’s gonna be great to look out at an audience of strangers being brought together over the one thing which is music.

There’s a lot of discussion in Ireland at the moment about how Dublin is becoming uninhabitable for younger generations. There are less opportunities in creative industries, and housing prices are through the roof. Are you worried at all about that trajectory?

Elijah: It’s a huge, huge issue. A lot of our friends have moved away to Berlin and else- where. I think when you have a lot of young people leaving, you’re gonna lose a lot of creative energy and that fire that a city needs. Which is really sad, because Dublin city’s music scene is doing so well right now. I feel like if house prices were lower, the city might feel more alive and creative and accessible.

Ryan: We’re in a homeless crisis at the moment. And it feels as though an awful lot more is just being said about it than getting done. And I think the same applies to just about any sort of topical thing that relates to people in Ireland who aren’t in government. It’s a frustrating time. But I think that has an awful lot to do with why young people are gravitating more and more towards the music scene that’s happening right now. Because it’s almost as though that’s the only thing that can be offered to them.

At the same time, it does feel like Irish music is having a bit of a renaissance, with emerging acts like Fontaines D.C., For Those I Love, Denise Chaila among others. How’s it been being in that environment?